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Getting a CELTA Pass A: Example CELTA Lesson Plans & Assignments 👨🏻‍🏫

Here’s everything I learned in the process of earning CELTA’s top grade, plus something you won’t find elsewhere: Pass-A-quality example lesson plans, assignments, and more.

Are you doing a CELTA course and shooting for an A? Or just want to learn more about what it takes? You’re in the right place.

I’ll start by being more pessimistic, but then I’ll dial it back. First, here’s Jo Gakonga with a short summary of the CELTA assessment guidelines :

Jenna Cody also has a great write-up about her experience getting a Pass A, and how difficult/intense it was.

Both Jo and Jenna want you to know that you probably shouldn’t be aiming for a Pass A. Jo starts out with this line: “The rather harsh truth that you might not want to hear is that you’re almost certain not to get a Pass A at CELTA. They don’t give that very easily.” And here’s Jenna: “I highly doubt that someone on the CELTA course with zero teaching experience could get a Pass A unless they were preternaturally talented or had some indirect experience.” Then there are Cambridge’s published grade stats , broken down by country and year. The 2019 results show that 6.5% of students got a Pass A, and in 2018 it was 5.4%.

So how hard is it? Getting a Pass A will take a lot of work, but I think everything above paints too pessimistic a picture. I got it without any teaching experience, and I don’t think I’m that talented. There are lots of things you can do to improve your odds, and I’m here to help!

My first advantage was that I did a semi-full-time six week course, and I wasn’t working while doing it. Four week courses are probably the most common, and the limited time is why CELTA is described by almost all students as intense. I was very grateful for the extra two weeks in my course, and it definitely gave me more time to polish everything I did. So for starters, don’t do a four week course if you can help it. However, in order to find a course with a longer schedule, you might need to shop around internationally…

Choosing a CELTA Training Center

It used to be that you had to do the course in person. Covid changed that. Now you can shop around internationally and attend online, choosing the center that fits your budget, ideal start date, course duration, and time zone. CELTA is highly standardized and teaching centers get close scrutiny from Cambridge, so I’m guessing that tutors in most centers are at least decent. And no matter where you take the course, your tutors and students will all be speaking English.

I went with International House Mexico . In addition to being one of the best priced centers in the world, their time zone is friendly for US students, and most of their instructors turned out to be excellent.

Note that many companies teach Cambridge’s CELTA course, which was confusing to me at first when trying to choose where to take it. The biggest players are International House and Teaching House , both of which have many locations around the world. But there are many other training centers and universities that also teach CELTA. Cambridge’s official site can help you sort through them all by country and city, but its UX is not great. StudyCELTA has an easier to use search that lets you find places based on CELTA course type (online intensive, online part time, online blended, full time face to face, or part time face to face) and course starting date, but they only show testing centers that they partner with. I used a mix of both websites to narrow down my choices.

Example Materials

Probably one of the more useful things you can do (even more than giving yourself extra time for the course) is to learn from high quality examples. CELTA tutors will conduct some demo classes and probably give you example materials for some (but not all) assignments, along with example teaching practice (TP) lesson plans from a prior student or two at their center. You should definitely learn from those! However, the quality of the written materials may vary. Some will definitely not be at Pass A level. So here I’m providing examples of my own work to give you ideas about how to approach and structure things and give you a sense of the level of work that will be needed. If this helps you, please let me know in the comments!

These are meant to be examples only. Don’t use any parts of them directly. Cambridge holds the submissions of all past CELTA students, including me, and they put assignments (and possibly other work) through plagiarism detectors. They’ll deny you a certification at the end of the course if they detect that you reused someone else’s work.

CELTA Assignment 1: Focus on the Learner (FOL)
CELTA Assignment 2: Language Related Tasks (LRT) — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA Assignment 3: Language Skills and Related Tasks (LSRT) — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA Assignment 4: Lessons from the Classroom (LFC) — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA TP6 Lesson Plan: Functional Language
TP7 Print Sheet — Streamlined copy that I used as my reference during class
CELTA TP8 Lesson Plan: Writing — Includes tutor feedback
CELTA Self Evaluation for TP6
CELTA Self Evaluation for TP7

Hopefully, yours come out better than mine!

Although your written materials might help push you over the edge from a regular Pass into Pass B or Pass A , of course they’re not everything. Being an effective teacher during your teaching practices is the baseline, and is at least as important. So I’ve got more tips…

This will mean an additional 45+ minutes of prep for each lesson, but I found it so beneficial that I stuck with it every time. During every dry run, my first pass was somewhat rough and I was able to make adjustments that made it better the second time around when I had real students. It helped me understand where things weren’t working and also where I needed to shorten things to stay within the available time.
Your first few dry runs will also be good opportunities to make sure you’re fully comfortable with any tools you’ll need like Zoom whiteboards/breakout rooms, Google Slides/Forms/Jamboards, etc.
After submitting a TP lesson plan, prepare a streamlined version that you can print in advance of your lesson (see the example I included above). This printout should be easy to read at a glance and exclude any fluff you won’t need during the lesson (references, detailed language analysis, etc.).
Incorporate any feedback tutors give you into your very next TP if possible, or as soon as appropriate. They want to see you show growth and responsiveness to feedback during the course. If your style or preferred teaching methodologies are different than theirs, that’s fine to go back to after the CELTA course. In the meantime, you should follow the opinionated approach that you’re paying them to teach you.
Participate at least a little in post-TP peer feedback, and write meaningful self evaluations. Both are expected for students with high grades. To make self evals easier to write, I waited until getting TP feedback from my tutors and incorporated parts of their feedback into what I wrote.
It’s okay to ask more questions about assignments since that’s not held against you in the same way.
For me, my tutor said that if I was scored then, I’d probably get a Pass B. He also gave helpful tips on where to focus to continue doing better.
After my next TP, I asked if I’d made enough progress on the areas he mentioned to be on track for Pass A, and I got even more advice.
I was told that Pass A students typically include lots of scripting in their TP lesson plans, including for any instructions, transitions between lesson stages, ICQs (instruction checking questions), and CCQs (concept checking questions). Make sure your scripts are concise and use appropriately graded language for the level of your students. I started out a bit wordy, and continually got feedback about reducing TTT (teacher talking time).
Learn everything you can about your language focus for the lesson, and make sure to include a language analysis table or section in every lesson plan. In addition to this being important for higher grades, the time I spent on this helped me several times with questions from students. I had solid answers for them as a result of the research I’d done beforehand, even when I hadn’t intended to include the more detailed coverage in the lesson.
Since all assignments are allowed to be resubmitted once, CELTA tutors stress that failing an assignment on the first try is no big deal and that you can think of the first submission as a draft that you’ll get feedback on before submitting the final version. But I wouldn’t rely on this. Based on what I gathered from them, getting a Pass B will be hard if you need to resubmit more than one assignment, and Pass A might not be possible with any resubmissions. Take extra time before submitting to get your polish in on the first try.
One of my tutors said assignments have a 10% word count leeway, so there’s no need to spend extra time e.g. shaving off a few more words if you’re over the limit. But you might want to confirm with your own tutors beforehand that it’s okay to rely on this.
Be organized and on time for everything. My recommendation: Prepare a detailed checklist each week of everything you need to do that week (see the example below). The schedule given to me by IH Mexico was kind of a mess—it was hard to follow and too high level for me. Partly as a result, my peer that I worked most closely with occasionally prepared for the wrong things or didn’t realize an assignment was due until the last minute. My checklists made it much easier for me and made me feel good about completing even small things that I’d then get to check off.

Following is my checklist for week five that I wrote in Evernote (which lets you easily create lists with checkboxes). I marked things to show up live for (Zoom calls) with 🎙️, and deadlines with ⏰.

🎙️ Monday 11am: Live group class
Read tutor feedback for LRT assignment
Read guided lesson plan
Read examples and references
Read my prep notes from 12/04
Review demo lesson
⏰ Wednesday 2 hr before: Submit final online
Prepare print sheet
Read my prep notes from 12/04 and 12/09
⏰ Friday 2 hr before: Submit final online
Dry run beforehand
⏰ Thursday: Write and submit self evaluation
Read tutor feedback
Guided lesson planning session for next week
⏰ Saturday: Write and submit self evaluation
Unit 14: Correction
Unit 18: Lesson Planning 2
Unit 19: Writing
Unit 20: Recording & Recycling Language
Observation: Task-based learning: Justin Vollmer (1 hr online)
Ask tutor about delta between my current performance and Pass A
Read instructions
Read suggested resources and examples
Fill in CELTA-5 info for the week
Finish draft of to-do list for week 6

If any of this helped you, let me know! And feel free to share your own advice.

Are you preparing for CELTA? Then check out my post on the best English teaching books to help you prepare.

17 thoughts on “Getting a CELTA Pass A: Example CELTA Lesson Plans & Assignments 👨🏻‍🏫”

This is amazing! Thank you so much for your insight and all the detail you included! I start my CELTA this coming Monday! I’m also doing it with IH Mexico City, but I’m taking the part time course, so it will be spread out over 12 weeks. Fingers crossed!

Go get ’em, Pedro!

Hello! Cheers, i took my CELTA with IH Izmir i just completed my TP8 today im just hoping for the best although i must say the assignments really did my braincells dirty

Cheers, Dion! Congrats on completing the course. I liked the assignments (partly because I like writing generally), but they did take a lot of time.

Hello Steven!

I cannot adequately express how thankful I am to you for writing this article and including the resources above. I have been looking for an encouraging article from a CELTA graduate who passed with an A but had no prior teaching experience.

I saw your comment on Lao Ren Cha’s Blogspot page, and it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It has been so discouraging to continuously read about how one must settle for a ‘pass’ if they have no prior teaching experience.

My goal is an A pass as well, and I will religiously follow the advice here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thelma, it’s great to hear this was helpful! Clearly, you’re highly motivated and ambitious, and I’m sure you’ll have great advice to share with others after you’re done. Wishing you the best!

Thank you very much, Steven! I appreciate the encouragement!

I hope you are well.

I have returned to thank you for providing examples of your work. It really helped me to put my best foot forward during the course. I have just received my recommended grade and it’s a PASS B. What was that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? 😀

Nonetheless, thank you so much for this helpful article and the examples. Much appreciated!

Congrats, Thelma! Pass B is dope! I know you were hoping for the A, but I think B is equal to A in terms of opening a few more doors for people without prior teaching experience. You’ll be a badass teacher. 😀

Thank you for the encouragement! Much appreciated!

Thank you so much for the tips and details of lesson plans. I am doing Celta and it’s taking a toll on my health. I can’t grasp evrrything,it’s just too hectic to do TP today and then prepare for next TP the day after next plus not forgetting assignments etc.. i am sure if one can learn all in 4 weeks ?

Thank you so much for writing this article! It’s absolutely fantastic and filled with a lot of extremely useful information. I’ll be starting a 4 weeks CELTA program in April 2023 (didn’t have the option of a semi-full time unfortunately) and was wondering about the TP sessions for each skill…will the course tutors give us specific topics to teach or do we get to select which texts/books to teach students for these sessions? For example, for planning and teaching reading skills, do we get to decide what to teach within this for the teaching practice session to fulfill the language skills related task?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks, Babloo! In my case at least, the reading class was TP1, and because it was earlier in the course there was more guidance on the topic and what to include. I was given a section from an English coursebook to extract the reading material from.

This is so useful, thank you. Apologies if you’ve already said elsewhere and I missed it… how much experience did you have with the English International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) before starting CELTA? Thanks!

None. I learned it as much as I needed to during the course. You indirectly raise a good point, though, that it would be very helpful to gain at least basic knowledge of the English IPA beforehand.

Heyaaaa, just wanted to say that 2 years later this post is still very extremely much… SUPER helpful!! Especially the attached samples, carried me through. I’m in my final two weeks of (part-time) CELTA. (fingers crossed).

Dear Steven Levithan, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for sharing your valuable experiences regarding the CELTA course. Your approach and the exchange of ideas and information reflect your distinguished and noble character, which is highly appreciated and deserving of recognition. I have a few questions about the lesson plans you’ve designed. Firstly, are the topics of these plans requested by teachers, or do you select them personally? Secondly, after designing these plans, is it necessary to execute them live in the classroom? Lastly, during the live execution of these plans in class, is it permissible to use the template of the lesson plan, or should they be presented from memory? I would appreciate a comprehensive explanation, as well as any additional advice you may have for the first and second weeks of the course that I should implement or observe in the classroom. Thank you for your guidance and support. Sincerely, Hamid

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Skills Related Tasks (LSRT)

Looking for help with CELTA Written Assignments? You’ve come to the right place.

Written assignments form a major part of the CELTA assessment process and are a compulsory part of the course. There are 4 written assignments in total but some centres conflate two of them to make one larger assignment. In this series we will look at each individual assignment and provide you with some advice and guidance as well as highlight some of the common pitfalls.

Disclaimer: All centres create their own written assignment rubrics, make sure you check with your centre exactly what is required. We can only provide general information here, rather than specific. With this in mind, do you think it would be wise to pay for other peoples’ assignments to help you write your own?

person holding blue ballpoint pen writing in notebook

Although every centre creates their own written assignments, the CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines states that for the LSRT assignment:

The design of the assignment is to include: • evidence of the candidate’s background reading in the topic area • identification of the receptive language skills and/or subskills that could be practised and developed using coursebook material or authentic text • identification of productive language skills that could be practised and developed in relation to that text • task design in relation to the text with brief rationale

Candidates can demonstrate their learning by: a. correctly using terminology that relates to language skills and subskills b. relating task design to language skills development c. finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

All written assignments should be 750 – 1000 words

Source: CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines

What does this mean for you? Well firstly, of course, you need to make sure you do some background reading and find out more about why we provide students with practice in the reading/listening subskills, what these subskills are and how you can give the students practice using them. It would be very easy for me to tell you the answers in this post but that won’t help you in the long run. Instead I can suggest a couple of sources for you to have a look at:

Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener
The CELTA Course by Cambridge University Press
Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language by Macmillan Education
Listening Skills – Blog Post by TUGtoC
Getting to Grips with Reading Skills – Blog Post by TUGtoC

If your centre’s assignment requires you to find your own material (reading or listening texts) make sure that it is something you can use for the level of learner you are aiming the lesson at. Whilst it is true that most material should be possible to use with all levels, the activities themselves must be aimed at the learners’ level.

Once you have found a text (if your centre hasn’t provided you with one) you will probably be asked to come up with suitable activities that will give the students practice in one or two of the reading/listening subskills. You can make sure that your activity really does practise the subskill you are suggesting by trialling the task yourself (ie if you want the students to scan for specific information, try it yourself and see if it is actually possible to find the answers by scanning!). Please also make it clear in your assignment that you will be giving the students the task to do while reading/listening – NEVER ask students to read or listen to something without giving them a task to do. If you give students something to read/listen to without a task then they will not be practising the listening/reading subskills, instead they will be listening/reading very carefully because they won’t have anything specific to focus on. I can’t tell you how frustrated we tutors get when trainees get this wrong 😦

After you have created your in-reading/in-listening part of the lesson you will be asked to suggest a follow-up activity that would have students practise either speaking or writing. After receptive skills practice students need to start being productive and as reading and listening is an individual task I would suggest a follow-up task should have more student interaction, this could be in written or spoken form but is more likely to be in spoken form as writing tends to be done alone. Whatever you decide to do, remember to exploit the context of the in-reading/listening tasks by, for example, remaining on the topic from the text. Remember, however, they should not be reading/listening to the text again for the post- activity.

One more thing you should make sure you do is write a bibliography, stating all the resources you have used to help you to write your assignment. Remember, CELTA requires you to prove you are capable of “finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task” – (Source: CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines) so make sure you prove this by including your bibliography.

When you think you have completed your assignment, walk away from it for at least a couple of hours. Go back to it later with a fresh pair of eyes and check it against the rubric. Ask yourself the following questions:

Have you done everything that you have been asked to do?
How many words have your written?
Is it clearly laid out and easy for someone else to read?
Are there any spelling, punctuation, grammar errors?
Are there any typos?
Have I included a bibliography?

Common Pitfalls

In our centre, trainees often fall foul of the following:

using the subskills terminology incorrectly (ie saying something is a scanning task when it is a skimming task)
providing a task that doesn’t practise the subskill they say it does
not highlighting the fact that the in-reading/listening task they would give students should be done while reading/listening
not submitting a complete assignment
writing much more than is required and going way over the word-count
not proof-reading their work before handing it in
not including a bibliography

Any one of the above can result in having to resubmit the assignment. Whilst having to resubmit is no bad thing, it does increase your workload and stress levels so should be avoided if possible.

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Author: Emma Jones

A CELTA Tutor based in Munich and co-author of The Ultimate Guide to CELTA View all posts by Emma Jones

CELTA Assignment 2: Language Related Tasks

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Exam Seekers

Content related to english exams and courses., |celta-010| assignment 2 – language related task.

Hello Exam Seekers,

Seeking some more information about the CELTA? Well, here it goes! 🙂

A friend has recently come to me to ask some questions about her first assignment in the CELTA. As I’ve already mentioned in a previous post, the CELTA first assignment according to the syllabus is the Focus on the Learner . However, centers have total autonomy to choose the order of the assignments, and as they can order the assignments as they please, it makes much more sense that the first assignment is “Language Related Task” than “Focus on the Learner”. Why?

Well… First, let’s try and understand how the Language Related Task works then I’ll answer the question above, ok?

First, we need to know what is the design of the assignment:

Length: 750–1,000 words >> identification of significant features of the form, pronunciation, meaning and use of language items/areas and the use of relevant information from reference materials.

Candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

analyzing language correctly for teaching purposes.
correctly using terminology relating to form, meaning and phonology when analyzing language.
accessing reference materials and referencing information they have learned about language to an appropriate source.
using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task.

Having that in mind, we have the following task:

This assignment involves analyzing language. On the next page, there is a typical text that you might use in class. Look at the items in the grids on the following pages (also underlined and boldfaced in the text). Choose 2 (two) grammar and 2 (two) vocabulary items and:

a) Analyze the meaning (in this context), form and pronunciation of the item;

b) Identify any problems students may have with meaning, form and pronunciation and provide realistic solutions;

c) State which references you have used to help you in your analysis.

By the end of your writing process your assignment should look like:

The image above just represents half of the assignment. Remember that you need to choose 2 (two) grammar and 2 (two) vocabulary items . Let’s follow the example above and work on the grammar item presented.

The first thing to do is to choose the grammar and vocabulary items that you want to work on. For example:

SHE HAD LEFT WHEN I ARRIVED.

When you have a grammatical structure to teach, you have to explain to the students some things about the items:

pronunciation

To teach the meaning of some words, or to work on students’ questions that might come up, you need to use CCQs . We have already written something about that, but for those of you who don’t remember, CCQs are the Concept Checking Questions . You can use them to teach a concept or to check students’ understanding of a concept, therefore it must be in your language analysis sheet.

Another important thing that you need to add to your assignment is the anticipated problems tab. If you are teaching any kind of concept, you need to be prepared for the questions that will come up, and it must be related to all of the aspects taught.

PART 1 – CONCEPT and FORM

While you are doing your assignment or preparing a lesson on grammatical points, you should have a grammar book with you. As you can see, the example above uses PARROT, M. (2000). Grammar for English Language Teachers. CUP.

What is the verb tense you are teaching? Check the grammar book and put it on the first tab. While you are checking the verb tense, you are figuring out if the verb tense you have has the same structure of your sentence, and that’s why the concept comes together with its form. So it should look like this:

Concept: Past Perfect
Form: Subject + had + verb in the past participle (irregular)

When you are teaching a grammatical item, you usually focus on affirmative, negative or interrogative independently. But sometimes, especially if you are working on the whole grammatical structure you should put the affirmative, negative and interrogative forms in your language analysis sheet, especially if you are writing an assignment on the topic.

And if you are working on a grammatical point, it should contain the timeline :

PART 2 – MEANING AND CCQs

Now that you know the form, what is the meaning of this sentence? Having the grammar book by your side and knowing the meaning of Past Perfect, you use what you know to translate the sentence that you have. Like in the example above:

Meaning: In this sentence, the event ‘left’ happened before the event ‘arrived’. The past perfect is used to refer to a completed action in the past that happened before another completed action. Therefore she left and he arrived right after.

When you are writing the meaning of this sentence, you have to think about how you are explaining the past perfect to your students. So you should come up with the following CCQs:

Did she leave after he arrived? (NO)
Did she leave before he arrived? (YES)
When did she leave? (BEFORE HE ARRIVED)

You can come up with more questions, but keep in mind that this should help you explain the meaning of the sentence you are presenting, ok? So it must be clear and simple and it should always be at the students’ level, for example, if you are teaching past perfect, your sentence must be in the simple past.

And don’t forget that next to the questions, you must put the answer in parenthesis.

As you can see in the example above, we have one YES question, one NO question and one OPEN question. Try to follow this structure, because having only negative questions/answers don’t show that your students know what the concept is, they might only know what it is not and not what it is.

PART 3 – PRONUNCIATION

There is a nice website to help you with the pronunciation: PHOTRANSEDIT . You write the word/sentence that you want and the website gives you the phonetic symbols. In our case, it shows this:

Pronunciation: /ʃid left wen hi əˈraɪvd/ – She had LEFT when he arRIved

However, pronunciation is not only the phonemic chart, but the intonation and the stress relevant to your sentence, and that’s why we added the sentence above with “left” and “arRIved” in capital letters.

You are not teaching your student the phonemic chart, but it is relevant for you to have this in your language analysis sheet because it guides you through teaching the sentences. Moreover, it is relevant that you teach your students that you say “she had LEFT” instead of “she HAD left”. They need to know which part of the sentence is stronger and also the pauses in the sentences so that they can speak well.

PART 4 – ANTICIPATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS (APS)

While you are teaching the meaning, form and pronunciation, there are always some students who don’t understand right away or show difficulties along the way, and that’s why you should have an ace up your sleeve.

When you’re planning your meaning, pronunciation and form, think of questions or problems students might have, write them and add the possible solution:

P: Ss may understand that she left after he arrived.

S: CCQs & Timelines.

Pronunciation:

P: Ss may pronounce /hedʒiː/ instead of /həd/.

S: Drill and t ranscription on the board.

P: Ss may use leave as a regular verb, as in ‘leaved’ .

S: Refer Ss to the chart of irregular verbs.

Now can you see the importance of the CCQs, the timetable and the phonemic chart? Because they should all be ready for you to use if the time comes.

Some important things to keep in mind: If you are teaching one word, for example, APPLE, how do you plan on writing your meaning and APS on your language analysis sheet? You can simply show a picture of an apple. When you are teaching a concrete concept you can always show a picture or use realia to teach, and you won’t be needing any APS for meaning since the meaning is quite obvious with the picture. It’s not necessary to be redundant or put lots of thing in your assignment and language analysis sheet. It should be concise and helpful for the person who is teaching that specif lesson.

PART 4 – REFERENCE

This is another important aspect of your assignment, you must write the reference from where you took the information you wrote. Here are some examples of good bibliography for you guys:

PARROT, M. (2000). Grammar for English Language Teachers.
WORKMAN, G. (2006). Concept Questions and Timelines. Chadburn Publishing.
CAMBRIDGE Dictionaries Online. Available at: <dictionary.cambridge.org>.
ESL Base. Teach English. Available at: <www.eslbase.com/grammar>.
OXFORD Advanced Learners Dictionary (2013). 8. ed. (app edition).
SOUNDS: The Pronunciation App (2011). MPL . (app edition)

When you’re done, make sure you included everything:

What about the vocabulary items? It works very similarly. The difference is that you are working with one or two words, so you need to say if it is a phrasal verb, an adjective, conjunction, etc . If you want an example of a vocabulary analysis, write in the comment section below for us to know and help, ok? As for now, I hope I have cleared some questions about the topic.

—–

Now answering the question posed at the beginning of the text, it makes much more sense that centers start by Assignment 2 – Language Related Task than Assignment 1 – Focus on the Learner , because it doesn’t matter if you are taking the full-time course or the part-time course , you should know how to organize your language analysis sheet from day 1 of the CELTA, because you will be teaching very soon. Meanwhile, getting to know your students is a process and it should be gradual. I mean… before choosing a specific student to interview and making your assignment you should be watching them and analyzing them.

Is it clear for you?

Once you know how to do your language analysis sheet and you are using it properly after writing Assignment 2, then you can focus on your learner and write an assignment on him/her.

I hope that this text has helped you. If you still have questions don’t forget to send us a message. Leave a comment in the comment section below or on our social media:

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Fantastic! Thank you a lot! I would be even more grateful if you could provide an example of vocabulary analysis 🙂

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Written Assignments

Written assignment cover page & resource.

Please use (and complete) a Written Assignment Cover Page for the first page of ALL of your written assignments.

ALL Written Assignments must be submitted in Word (doc or docx) format.

Download the Written Assignment Cover Page (docx)

If you don't have Word, use this Written Assignment Cover Page (Google Doc - Go to "File" (top left), then "Download" to download in various formats).

Before you get started on your Written Assignments, you can refer to this handy Written Assignment Resource that we've put together to give you a starting point for your research and other helpful resources for getting started with and completing each of the tasks below.

LSRT - Language Skills Related Task

Download the LSRT Rubric

Download the LSRT Guidelines

Download the LSRT Sample

For this assignment, choose an authentic reading text to practise and develop your learners’ reading skills. Choose a text which is suitable for one of your teaching practice classes.

Design a receptive skills lesson and describe the procedure of your lesson in prose, including the following information:

Say why you have chosen the text, comment on its suitability for use in the classroom and say which level you would use it with. Submit a sourced copy of the text with your assignment.

Design a lead-in , saying how you would raise your learners’ interest in the topic of the text.

Design an initial reading task and state which sub-skill(s) it practises. Include the task (with answers) on a separate handout.

Design a second reading task and state which sub-skill(s) it practises. Include the task (with answers) on a separate handout.

Design one or two productive skills follow-up tasks (speaking or writing) which capitalise on the interest generated by the text. Include the task(s) with your assignment.

Provide a rationale for doing each stage and task. Reference at least one methodology text to support your ideas.

Assessment criteria

The assignment should be written in continuous prose, with clear headings and paragraphing.

Cambridge English specifies that for the Language skills related tasks assignment, successful candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

correctly using terminology that relates to skills and sub-skills

relating task design to language skills practice

finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task.

Word count: 750 – 1000 words

LRT - Language Related Task

Download the LRT Rubric

Download the LRT Guidelines

Download the LRT Sample

Download the LRT Rubric and you will see a typical text that you might get students to read in class. It contains some useful language for Part 1 of your assignment. ( Your TP Language Analysis Sheets will be Part 2 ; read the rubric for details – link above).

Look at the items from the text in the box below. Choose one of the grammar structures and do the following:

analyse the meaning , describing how you would check students’ understanding. Use concept checking questions and some other clarification techniques if necessary, e.g. timelines, personalisation.

highlight the form

highlight key pronunciation features

focus on appropriacy where necessary

anticipate problems that students might have with meaning, form, pronunciation and appropriacy and suggest solutions . The solutions for problems with meaning could include some of the same techniques you used to analyse meaning, e.g. concept checking questions, timelines and personalisation

state which references you have used to help you in your analysis.

…everything that has happened to us during the day. (grammar)

…but sooner or later we have to sleep . (grammar)

If scientists invented a pill which, if you took it, would keep you awake for ever, would you take it ? (grammar)

Two example answers, one grammar and one lexis, have been done for your guidance. These can be found in the Guidelines for Assignment 2 link above.

Cambridge ESOL specifies that for the Language related tasks assignment , successful candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

analysing language correctly for teaching purposes

correctly using terminology relating to form, meaning and phonology when analysing language

accessing reference materials and referencing information they have learned about to an appropriate source

using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task.

FOL - Focus on the Learner

Download the FOL Rubric

Download the FOL Guidelines

Download the FOL Sample

In this assignment it is possible to focus on an individual adult learner or a group of adult learners (age 18+).

Part A: Write a profile of the learner(s)

In the profile it is important to include the following information about the learner(s):

Level, nationality and mother tongue.

Background and learning experience, with particular regard to learning English.

Reasons / motivation for learning English and what you consider to be their needs.

Preferred learning style(s) and the activities which they enjoy most and benefit from in class.

Details of their strengths and weaknesses. There should be a balance of grammar, lexis, pronunciation and the four skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing). This analysis will help you prepare for the second part of the assignment.

Refer to at least one reference book to support your observations.

Word count for part A: 550-700 words

Part B: Identify language problems and provide suitable activities from published material to address these.

For this part of the assignment choose two specific language problems. Use your analysis of the strengths and weaknesses in part A to help you identify two key areas which the learner(s) need help with. Focus on problems with grammar, lexis and pronunciation, but avoid choosing two problems from the same area, e.g. two problems with grammar.

Find one activity that could be used with your learner(s) for each problem . You need to find two activities in total. You should hand these in with your assignment. These activities must be from other published material, and not from coursebook material you are using, or have used, on the course. Give a rationale for why you chose each activity stating:

Why you have chosen to focus on that area of grammar, lexis or pronunciation.

What exactly the activity you have chosen practises. Do not include a description of how you would use the activity.

Why you believe the activity is appropriate for your learner(s). Consider whether it is engaging, meaningful and culturally suitable.

Word count for part B: 200-300 words

The assignment should be written in continuous prose, with clear headings and paragraphing. Although it might be necessary to discuss and share data with your colleagues, assignments must be written independently.

Cambridge English specifies that for the Focus on the learner assignment, successful candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

showing awareness of how a learner’s / learners’ background(s), previous learning experience and learning style(s) affect learning

identifying the learner’s / learners’ language/skills needs

correctly using terminology relating to the description of language systems and language skills

selecting appropriate material and / or resources to aid learner’s / learners’ language development

providing a rationale for using specific activities with a learner / learners

finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources.

Total word count: 750 – 1000 words

LFC - Lessons from the Classroom

Download the LFC Rubric

Download the LFC Guidelines

Download the LFC Sample

This assignment is linked to your own experiences and progress in teaching practice, your observation of peers, your ‘live’ observations of experienced teachers and the filmed lessons in the Observation Room .

Please organise your assignment under the following headings:

Your teaching strengths Identify at least three areas of teaching which you have improved on during the course and state how you have achieved this progress. You should include specific examples from lessons you have taught and feedback comments from trainers, other trainees and your teaching practice students.

Areas for improvement Identify at least three areas of teaching you need to work on and make suggestions on how to improve on these after the course. Give examples from your teaching and include comments from trainers, other trainees and your teaching practice students to justify your suggestions.

Observations of other trainees and experienced teachers Identify particular strengths and skills you have observed, commenting on both your peers and experienced teachers. You should include specific examples of skills and techniques you would like to use in the future, and say how you will incorporate them into your own teaching.

Further development after the course Say how you intend to increase your knowledge of ELT after the course. State which sources you intend to use to find out information about new methods and approaches. You should also say how you intend to develop your teaching skills in the future.

Cambridge English specifies that for the Lessons from the classroom assignment, successful candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

noting their own strengths and weaknesses in different situations in light of feedback from learners, teachers and tutors

identifying which ELT areas of knowledge and skills they need further development in

describing in a specific way how they might develop their ELT knowledge and skills beyond the course

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Transcription
About language

CELTA written assignment: focus on the learner(s)

The purpose of the assignment

The CELTA handbook (5th edition) explains that this assignment allows you to demonstrate that you can:

show awareness of how a learner’s/learners’ background(s), previous learning experience and learning preferences affect learning
identify the learner’s/learners’ language and/or skills needs
correctly use terminology relating to the description of language systems and/or language skills
select appropriate material and/or resources to aid the learner’s/learners’ language and/or skills development
provide a rationale for using specific activities with a learner/learners
find, select and reference information from one or more sources
use written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

That's a lot to cover in 1000 words so you need to be concise and stay focused. This is not the place to discuss general approaches to teaching.

Most centres choose one of two ways to set this assignment:

You may be asked to focus on a specific learner from one of the teaching practice classes or
You may be asked to focus on the whole of a teaching practice class.

You may even be given a choice.

Whichever assignment you are set, the considerations are the same but, obviously, more depth will be required in 1. than in 2.

This is in the genre of an Information Report and it has three parts:

A brief introduction stating the basic information about the learner or the class. Say what you are doing and who the subject of the investigation is.
An area-by-area report giving the data you have gathered, noting strengths, weaknesses and needs as you go along.
sources for language and/or skills development and, if it's needed, personal support
ideas for language and/or skill focused activities Link this section carefully to the data you have gathered, explaining why you think the ideas will help.

You can combine the second and third areas if that makes sense to you so two structures are possible:

Choose one structure or the other. Do not mix them up or you'll be incoherent.

An example of the learner's writing. The neatest way to get this is to write a short note to the learner saying who you are, giving a bit of background (age, background, personal details etc.) and asking the learner to respond in like manner. That way, you get the personal stuff you need and an example of how well they can handle the simple language needed to give some personal data (name, age, occupation etc.).
reasons for learning English
language learning background
student’s opinion of their strengths and weaknesses in English
preferred class and activity types
You can, of course, gather some of this data by designing a questionnaire. See the guide to needs analysis to get some ideas. There is an example of a basic needs analysis form here.
Record the interview and listen to it again, making notes of consistent errors and the learner's communicative effectiveness. You can provide a tapescript of some important parts of the interview to exemplify the areas you think need work in the assignment. You will need the person's permission to do this, of course.
If recording is not an option, make as many notes as you can on the learner's use of English as you go along.
Learning style. The new edition of the handbook (the 5th) has removed any explicit reference to learning styles because the theories that underlie such things have been comprehensibly debunked. The syllabus now contains reference to learning preferences. However, for reasons which are slightly obscure, some CELTA centres and tutors are wedded to the idea of learning styles. Many will let you have a copy of something called a VARK questionnaire to give to the subject. There is, of course, a guide to learning styles on this site but you should treat the area with great scepticism. See also the article attempting to debunk the whole concept .

You need to set out some information about the people in the class: ages, occupations, reasons for learning etc. See the table above. The only sensible way to do this with a group of people is via a questionnaire needs analysis. See the guide to needs analysis to get some ideas. There is an example of a basic needs analysis form here.
You can investigate learning preferences but will have to identify from the data any commonalities in the class rather than details of each learner. See point f., above.
For the final section of the assignment where you make suggestions, you'll need to be a bit more generalised and identify common aims and needs rather than individual ones. One approach is to identify the two weakest and the two strongest students and identify appropriate activities, resources and aims for them. That should also cover everyone in between.

The student is studying English for no apparent purpose at the moment. He or she may need the language in the future for some purpose but at the moment that is not clear. The student may also need the language as part of a general education, for access to English-language websites and for travel and tourism. This student needs General English (a GE learner).
This student need English to settle and integrate in an English-speaking culture for an indefinite time. This student needs English as a Second or Other Language (an ESOL learner)
This student needs English for business and commercial purposes either because his/her professional setting demands it or because she/he is intending to study Business and/or Management. This student needs Business English (a BE learner).
This student intends to study in an English-medium institution such as a university or college. This student needs English for Academic Purposes (an EAP learner).
This student needs English for a narrow area of concern such as access to written scientific texts, to work in a particular occupation such as the hospitality industry, air traffic control, the merchant marine, the transport industry etc. This student needs English for a Specific Purpose (an ESP learner).
All of the above can be subdivided into a bewildering range of acronyms including, e.g., EGOP (English for General Occupational Purposes), EGPP (English for General Professional Purposes), ELF (English as a Lingua-Franca, for communication between non-native speakers of English worldwide), English in the Workplace (EiW), English for Professional Purposes (EPP) and so on.

"I want to learn English to fit into an English-speaking culture and work and socialise." This student has Integrative Motivation (to integrate into a cultural milieu).
"I want to learn English to use the language in business meetings / to study a subject at university." This student has Instrumental Motivation (using the language as a tool to do other things).
"I love the language and enjoy learning it and speaking it." This student has Intrinsic Motivation (the pressure to learn comes from within).
"I have been told to learn English by my employer / parents / sponsor." This student has Extrinsic Motivation (the pressure to learn comes from outside).

Be careful not to be too dogmatic here. People are complicated and their motivations are often obscure, even to themselves, so try to avoid statements such as

This learner is extrinsically motivated.

Prefer, instead, something a bit more careful such as:

From the data supplied in the short questionnaire, it seems that this learners is aware of the need to learn enough English to be able to function in the workplace but is also keen to access English-speaking websites and understand something of the cultures of English-speaking societies. She has, therefore, a mix of instrumental and integrative motivation and needs English as a tool as well as for cultural access.

There is a guide to motivation on this site but you do not need all the detail now. If you would like a simpler guide to motivation which still gives more data than here, there is one in the TKT course materials (new tabs).

Obviously, the suggestions you make will be determined by what you have discovered about the learner(s).

Why do you suggest it?
What's its target?
How will it help?
Include both ideas for activities and ideas for materials to use and topics to focus on.
Identify both language structure and skills needs. For example, From the data summarised in point xxx above, I would argue that a priority for this learner / these learners is to enhance his / her / their reading skills because they / he / she identify it as a weakness and this is supported by my observations. Good reading skills are needed for study in the UK and the majority of these EAP students / this EAP student will be going on to university in the next few months. Therefore, I suggest using xxxx in class and starting a reading club using xxxx books and resources. The student(s) will also benefit from a specific focus on both reading for gist and reading intensively so I suggest the following activities will be helpful... or Another area of weakness I have identified in point yyyy above is the student(s)' lack of vocabulary . Therefore, I suggest a specific focus on general academic vocabulary including using yyyy as a resource and spending at least one lesson per day focusing on common academic collocations (such as reasonable to argue, arising from the data, developing the point further etc.). This will improve the learner(s)' ability to be precise in terms of meaning and use conventional language in academic essays. The class / student will also benefit from work on cohesive devices such as therefore, firstly, finally, because, furthermore etc. as his / her / their writing shows that they avoid or misuse these structures in general (see appendix 2, and the comments in point z). This will make the learner(s)' writing in particular more accessible, better organised and fluent.

Do not repeat yourself here. It's not necessary and you don't have enough words to play with. What you do need to do here is identify the main facts and the most important suggestions. In other words, prioritise .

Before you submit your assignment, here's a quick checklist. You can have this as a PDF file by clicking here or you can mentally tick things off on the screen.

learning preferences
the questionnaire and a summary of the results
samples of work
I have identified at least 5 language problems the learner(s) have / has
I have given examples
general future work
specific ideas to deal with the problems I identified

Now assess yourself against the criteria for the assignment. Here they are again. Have you been able to:

Your tutors will maintain a record of the work you have done on the written assignments and will grade each of the criteria as follows: NS (Not to Standard), S (at Standard) or S+ (above Standard). You need to aim consistently for S or S+ grades, naturally.

If you have managed to tick all the items, well done. Submit the assignment and move on.

CELTA Skills Related Tasks Assignment

Published by awalls86 on july 12, 2022 july 12, 2022.

For more tips and advice about CELTA, click here .

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The skills related task is usually the third assignment on the CELTA. By this point, you have hopefully already had two assignments back with a pass (if you’re following these guides) and are getting into the swing of writing these assignments.

What do you have to do?

For this assignment you need to outline a lesson based on authentic listening or reading material. Depending on the course provider, you may be given a choice of material to use or you may have the freedom to choose any authentic material you wish.

You are required to write between 750 and 1000 words. This does not include the listening or reading material or the tasks that you design.

Choosing materials

Either your CELTA provider will give you a number of materials to choose from, or you may have complete freedom to choose any authentic material. Remember that authentic materials are those that are not designed for language learners and, therefore, have not been graded for students.

You will need to justify why you are choosing these materials for the particular students at their particular level. The centre may or may not require you to pick materials for the students you are teaching on the course. However, even if this is not required, it is a good idea because then you can actually use the lesson for one of your TPs.

When I did my CELTA, I picked rental adverts in newspapers (I had total freedom to choose). My justification for this is that I was teaching students living in the UK who were likely to need to find a place to live at some point. As upper intermediate students, I felt they could deal with a lot of the vocabulary, but that there were certain phrases that were particular to this topic and genre that could cause students problems.

And when I did this lesson as my final TP (as I say, you don’t have to teach the lesson if you don’t want to), despite suffering from a terrible cold, I can confirm that it was my strongest lesson on the course. Most notably, two of the students in the lesson were whispering to each other at one point “listen, we need this for when we move next year!”

When choosing the material, keep in mind the interests of your students and what they would like to do with English outside of the course. You also need to make sure it is of a reasonable level for the students. Of course, what really determines the level is not the text itself, but the tasks that you devise.

That said, for most tasks students will need to understand around 95-98% of the words to gain any benefit. In other words, there shouldn’t be more than one new word in every twenty. It can be a useful activity to go through the text and highlight what you suspect will be new words.

There are also tools that will tell you what CEFR level the words are in a text. You can copy and paste the text here for example and get a breakdown of the level of each word. You don’t need to reference if you use such a tool, but it can stop you making the claim that a lexically dense and difficult text is suitable for a low level.

Introducing the Material

After justifying the choice of material, you will likely need to say how you would introduce this material. Basically, you need to describe a lead in to the material that will activate the students’ schemata (their pre-existing knowledge).

It may make most sense to deal with this aspect of your lesson outline last. When you know where your lesson is heading, then it becomes easier to see what is important in a lead in.

When you’re ready to describe the lead in, you don’t need to re-invent the wheel here. Strong lead ins could include activities like:

discussing questions in pairs
watching a video clip with a question
ranking some ideas or pictures
sharing a personal anecdote (with a question for students)

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary

The next step of the assignment is likely to ask you about the language you would choose to pre-teach and why. Contrary to popular belief, it is not important to pre-teach every word that students may not know, and in fact this may be undesirable.

The main reason why we wouldn’t want to pre-teach a word is because we would then be depriving students of an opportunity to work it out for themselves. Generally, when we work things out ourselves, we tend to remember them better, so it is better if students are able to do this.

Look at these two sentences. In each a made-up word is highlighted. Can you guess the meaning:

1) The coach grawled the team in front of the media for not working hard enough.

2) She put the book on a monpurain .

Probably, you can guess that the first word means something like criticised, since this is what a coach can be expected to do if his team doesn’t work hard. The second is much more difficult; it could be an item of furniture, but it could equally be something else. Of course, another sentence could reveal this meaning in a text, not just the sentence it first appears in.

The other important consideration for pre-teaching is whether a word is necessary to complete the task you want students to do. Of course, you won’t know that until you have designed your tasks.

Once more the three considerations for pre-teaching vocabulary are:

– Does the student know this word? (If so, why teach it?)

– Does the student need it for the task? (If no, teach it when they need it)

– Can they guess the meaning from the text? (If yes, give them the opportunity to guess)

Designing Tasks

The real meat of this assignment is devising some tasks to do with the materials. You will need to have at least two tasks and these should focus on two different “sub-skills”.

The sub-skills you may cover are reading or listening for:

specific information
detailed information

You need to make sure you understand what these three sub-skills are and that you use these labels correctly within your assignment. You are advised to read about them in more detail in the recommended books. However, in short:

Gist concerns the overall meaning of the text. A gist task therefore tests whether students have understood this correctly. For example, a gist task could be to listen to a conversation and say who the speakers are, where it is taking place and the broad topics that are covered.

Specific information is about key points of information such as a price or a fact. Such tasks test the students’ ability to distinguish these. An example could be finding the prices in a menu to price up a meal, or to listen for a reference number.

Detailed information concerns more nuanced information such as a person’s opinion or reasons. Such tasks require a deeper understanding of the text to distinguish these. Such a task could be to listen to a complaint from a customer and pinpoint the reasons why the customer is upset and what they want to happen.

When choosing tasks, we would ideally try to emulate what we really do with such texts. However, this isn’t always possibly and so our tasks often end up being somewhat artificial.

Two things you certainly shouldn’t do are:

Plan to have students read or listen to the text without any task at all. Always ensure students listen/read and something. This could just be answering a question.
Don’t plan to have students read the text aloud. They can read the text to themselves.

Post-Reading/Listening

You will also likely be expected to say what you will do after the reading or listening. This can be either writing or speaking. It is often expected listening will be followed by speaking and reading with writing but there is no reason why it has to be. Listening to a phone call, you may decide that writing a letter is a sensible follow up task. Similarly, if the students read a letter, a telephone call could be a sensible speaking task.

As with other parts of this assignment, you will need to justify why this task is applicable to the text and to the students.

Celta: ordering activities.

For more tips and advice about CELTA, click here. Ordering Activities Join my telegram channel for teachers. Click here A lesson should not just be a collection of activities that are thrown together somehow. Your Read more…

CELTA: Lesson Aims

For more tips and advice about CELTA, click here. Lesson Aims Join my telegram channel for teachers. Click here One of the most important aspects of lesson planning is defining clear aims. A good lesson Read more…

CELTA: Assisted Lesson Planning

For more tips and advice about CELTA, click here. Assisted Lesson Planning Join my telegram channel for teachers. Click here Prior to many of your teaching practice sessions on the CELTA course, you will be Read more…

Before you go...

Find out how to save time on your CELTA assignments!

Lessons from the Classroom: CELTA Assignment

The Lessons from the Classroom CELTA assignment is slightly more accessible than other assignments on the course, but it still deserves your full attention to complete it to a high level.

It is also an extremely beneficial experience as it engages you in a form of reflective practice. This is not only helpful for your development as a teacher, but reflecting in this way can also help you in other professional and personal domains.

This assignment is also a great opportunity to show that you have been continuously learning and applying what your tutors have told you throughout your CELTA course.

I should also add that for some centres this will be CELTA Assignment 3, for others CELTA Assignment 4. This is because CELTA centres have some flexibility on certain aspects of the assignments.

Either way, this post follows the rubric and guidance from the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, as found on their official site. In short, it will all be relevant for you.

So, to give you a brief outline, throughout this post I will go through the following:

Logistics and rubric of this assignment
Points to include in your work
Tips to get through it
Books to help you with this CELTA assignment
Useful links and relevant resources
Examples of various Lessons from the Classroom assignments posted online

Ready? Let’s go!

What is the word limit for the ‘Lessons From the Classroom’ CELTA assignment?

As stated in the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, the word limit for the Lessons From the Classroom assignment is 750 to 1000 words .

This is the same as the Focus on the Learner assignment , as well as other CELTA course assignments .

As with all of these assignments, make sure you are within this range! It would be silly to risk losing marks because you are a few words over or under the limits given.

What do you have to include in this assignment?

In this written assignment on your CELTA course, you will have to show the following:

That you can identify and are aware of your strengths in teaching.
That you know what you need to do to develop as a teacher and can and suggest practical ways to do this.
That you can reflect on your teaching, as should be evident from the points above.
What you have learnt by reflecting on your observations of experienced ELT professionals, probably your tutors or other teachers.

How can you evidence or demonstrate the points above in the Lessons from the Classroom CELTA Assignment ?

In terms of answering points 1-4 above, you can do the following:

Include a clear section on the strengths in your teaching, with specific examples. For example, state when and how you identified these strengths, and follow this with an equivalent section detailing some of your weaknesses.
Identify specific aspects of ELT knowledge and skills which you feel need to learn the most about.
As continued from above, if you are particularly unsure about teaching pronunciation, for example, you could identify in your assignment specific resources or workshops to attend to help you improve this aspect of your teaching.
Mention lessons and language points that you have observed ELT professionals teaching. Go into detail about surprising or noteworthy points from the lessons you observed and how it changed your perspective .You could also mention parts of lessons that you observed which reaffirmed or validated your own teaching practice, perhaps through things that you have already done in your TP sessions.

Tips for the Lessons from the Classroom CELTA Assignment

With the above points in mind, below are some key tips to help you complete this task to the best standard that you can.

Keep a Diary

Keep a diary throughout the course to help you reflect on all that you have learnt and the journey that you have been on.

You will have the CELTA 5 booklet that contain some space for this, however I would recommend using a diary or journal of your own in addition to this.

If you complete a few words in here at least 3-4 days a week (it doesn’t have to be any more than this), then this assignment should more or less write itself come the end of the course.

If you do not like writing in this way, you could equally keep a video or audio record on your smartphone or other device . Just hit record and go over your thoughts for the day in 30 seconds to 1 minute. You can’t say that would be too much!

You could even post to Instagram with a hashtag like #celtadiary (although there’s not much there yet!) and take a selfie each day. It doesn’t have to be a chore!

The problem is that if you do not do something like this, when it comes to the end of the course, you will likely be exhausted.

Without a diary or journal , you may struggle to remember these things, not least because you feel so tired with all that you have learnt throughout the CELTA course!

Be Specific

Hopefully you’ve got this message from the bullet points in a previous section, but just in case, here’s a little bit more on it.

When you are specific in your observations and writing, you make it much easier for yourself and for your tutors to understand exactly what you are trying to say.

You will also have many moments and experiences to reflect on. So, if you can, state the exact language point at a certain part of a lesson during a specific teaching practice session. For example:

“Near the start of TP3, I was eliciting information from the pre-intermediate students’ to confirm their prior knowledge of the past perfect. From their answers, I realised I had assumed that they would know more about this language point than they did, which caused problems for the rest of my lesson. This made me realise that making such assumptions could be problematic for future lessons, and therefore I decided to pitch subsequent lessons at a slightly lower level for that group.”

Using Clear, Accurate and Appropriate Language

If you’re concerned about your ability to write clearly, accurately and appropriately for this assignment, as is a key part of the rubric for this, below are a few things you can do.

The first thing I would recommend for anyone, native or non-native speaker, is to print out the assignment on paper and go over it by hand.

I know timing can be an issue which makes you think this is not possible, but even if you do it quite quickly by hand, I’m sure you will identify more issues than by spending the same amount of time checking it on a screen.

When checking on paper, treat this as if you were marking a student’s written work, take a red pen and add any corrections as needed.

I do this all the time for most of my blog posts (including this one), and for any formal written work I need to submit. Although the odd error still does slip through the net (!), I find many more errors than I do by looking at them on the screen.

I also quickly become aware of awkward language of sentences through doing this, again something which I don’t always sense when I am looking at it on a screen.

Another thing you can do here is to swap your work with someone else on the course whom you trust. Obviously, this is a judgement call on your part but if there is someone who you feel you can trust in this way, then just ask and see what they say.

Even if the person reading it is not a CELTA tutor, they should still be able to identify awkward parts of language or points which are unclear more readily than you, the writer.

Useful Links & Relevant Resources for this CELTA Assignment

For further recommended reading and resources, below are some useful links for you:

This guide to the assignment by ELT Concourse has lots of detailed questions to think about and consider and is well worth a read.
This video by Jo Gakonga of ELT Training is very detailed and helpful.

Jo Gakonga also has posted this slideshare presentation of the same video:

Books for the Lessons from the Classroom Assignment

In terms of books, you will certainly benefit from reading around the topic. Here are the most useful books to check out:

This book can help you to consider relevant areas for teacher development in your future in the ELT profession.
An extremely popular book which will serve you well before, during and after the CELTA course.I like Scrivener’s practical approach to writing and teaching and it will likely suit you if you prefer practicality over theoretical or technical aspects of teaching. His books always seem to be very ‘readable’, likely for the reason above.
This is a fantastic guide to improve your knowledge of and ability in teaching grammar.It has many relevant practical exercises which could serve as examples in your assignment, too.
This book helps to make teaching pronunciation clearer and more fun.Underhill is all about pronunciation as a physical activity and will likely make you think of speech in a different way as a result.
NB: All of the above are affiliate links, as with links to the diary and journal. This means no difference in price for you but, if you choose to purchase through these links, it helps to support CELTA Helper to continue to publish content and help people like you on their CELTA journey.

Example ‘Lessons from the Classroom’ Assignments with PDFs

Here are some examples frrom around the web that you might like to read. Remember – if you want to download from most of the sites below, you will either need to create a free account or possibly have to pay. It is up to you whether you want to do that but all documents are free to view!

I should also add that these are examples which students have uploaded. It does not mean that they are exemplary, rather that they can give you an idea of the finished work.

CELTA Assignment 4: Lessons from the Classroom by Iuliia Kumicheva on Academia.edu
CELTA Assignment 4-Lessons from the Classroom by Jai Kumar on Academia.edu
CELTA Assignment Three: Lessons from the Classroom by Joss Wright on Cite SeerX (which certainly looks like a trustworthy website from first glance)
CELTA Lessons From the Classroom by tranzit on Scribd.com

To round up, you should now be able to see that the lessons from the classroom CELTA assignment is much more about you being an active learner than anything else.

Following the steps outlined above should help you to meet the key requirements of this assignment on your C ELTA course.

If you also have this assignment in mind throughout your course, then you should have little trouble in writing it since you will be thinking in this way from the start. On the CELTA, self-reflection will help you, just as it will in your future work.

If you have any questions about this assignment that are still not answered, please leave them in the comments below and I will get back to you!

Best of luck with your assignment and the rest of your course!

PS You may also like to get your assignments or application checked by Scribendi – an online proofreading service (affiliate link) I used to work for that provides high-quality work.