The last of the four assignments we did during CELTA was a piece of cake. The only horrid part about it was that we had to do it in the last week, when we also had to present our hour-long lesson plan, which had us all in a frenzy! In the midst of all the excitement, the end of the course and all, we also had to deal with the Fart Machine madness.. hahaha. Fernanda, the crazy Brazilian teacher doing the CELTA with us, was intensely fascinated by all things nubile. She bought a fart machine to use on her students back in Americana (near Sao Paolo) but used it in class with us first! hahaha…. I have to admit, it was fuuuuunny, and I was her partner in crime

Anyway, so in the midst of the madness, we had to do this assignment on lessons we’ve learnt during the CELTA. Again, there were all kinds of arbit guidelines we had to follow.. it was intensely stupid, but the only way to ensure my $2500 did not go in vain was to follow the guidelines. Sigh.. bureaucratic paperwork!

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The third assignment we did during CELTA was also fun. We had the choice of doing the assignment on either Reading Skills or Listening Skills. Since we also needed to reproduce the materials for the assignment, everyone obviously chose to do it on Reading Skills. Much easier to just copy, paste text from somewhere than get listening material. I wonder why they even give us a choice.. haha!

We also had the choice of picking reading material straight from the book or choosing an authentic text (text that has actually been published – online or on paper – and not been graded to the reading level of the ESL students). I definitely wanted to an authentic text.. I was bored to death with the awfully boring stuff in the ESL textbooks, and I thought students must find authentic texts more interesting, even though it can be more challenging and may contain words they haven’t come across.

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So here’s the second in the series of CELTA assignments I decided to post on this blog. It almost seems like the number of posts in the CELTA category are going to exceed the total number of other posts in different categories! Shame, considering I started this blog more than two years ago. Stupid internet addiction has overtaken life, sigh.. I barely write anymore, I should I should. Promise to write more beginning next month (am harboring a huge secret inside me that’s just waiting to burst out.. when I can’t hold it in any longer, I’ll write it down here).

Oops, I did it again.. the digressions – I think I would really make a fantastic stream of consciousness writer, considering my stream of consciousness carries me away ever so often. Virginia Woolf, my mai-baap.. he he!

Anyway, so this assignment, the second we had to do during the month-long course, was a hundred times more interesting than the first, which if you’ve seen it, you’d know was dry as a rehab doll This assignment, which our trainers called ‘Focus on the Learner’ was more my style, i.e. journalistic.

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5 Comments | In: CELTA Assignments | tags: celta assignment, ESL, ESL Lesson Plans, esl students, focus on the learner, learner assessment. | #

Now I know every CELTA center sets its own assignments for its CELTA trainees but I don’t think they are vastly different from center-to-center. For one, Fernanda, the Brazilian woman who was at St. Giles International in San Fran with us showed us a bunch of assignments that her friend did at the Sao Paolo center, and they weren’t so different.

You can download this assignment with the link below. I haven’t posted it here for two reasons – it’s a really long assignment (like 5 pages in MS Word), and I’m too lazy to post it here!!

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8 Comments | In: CELTA Assignments | tags: CELTA, celta assignment, english, ESL, ESL Lesson Plans, language analysis, lesson plan, teaching. | #