TEACHER TRAINING

CELTA - Assessment

SECTION LINKS

Assessment is continuous throughout the course. There is no ‘final exam’. There are two areas of assessment: Teaching Practice and Written assignments. To be successful overall, candidates must pass in both areas.

There are three successful overall grades: Pass A (excellent work), Pass B (very good) and Pass (Satisfactory – good).

Teaching Practice (TP)

Candidates are required to teach lessons that are observed and assessed for a total of 6 hours. This time is usually divided into 9 lessons, some taught to low level students and some to a high level class. Each lesson is graded according to the teaching goals for that stage of the course. The teaching goals are outlined and discussed extensively in input sessions, teaching feedback discussions and lesson planning time. Predictably, more is expected of candidates in lessons towards the end of the course. Over the course, each candidate is observed teaching by two different tutors.

Broadly speaking, TP involves 3 aspects: lesson planning, lesson delivery and lesson evaluation. In deciding the standard of a trainee’s lesson, weight is given to the quality of the planning beforehand and the trainee’s own evaluation of the lesson afterwards, not just the work in the classroom.

Written assignments

Candidates complete 4 assignments: one focuses on adult learning, one on language analysis (grammar & pronunciation), one on designing tasks to develop students’ language skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing), and one on evaluating classroom teaching.

Assignments are set and submitted throughout the course, and are linked with input sessions as much as possible. Assignments are often marked by both course tutors, and they are graded as Pass or Fail. Very clear criteria and guidelines are given with the instructions when an assignment is set.

If an assignment does not meet the criteria when handed in initially, it can be resubmitted once. It is not possible to pass the course overall if more than one assignment is ultimately graded as ‘fail’.

The word count for each assignment is approximately 1,000 words. Answers in note form are possible for one assignment but the others need to be completed in a semi-formal essay or report style.