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Celta Assignment 4-Final

This document contains Alejandro Nunez's CELTA assignment which summarizes his experience in the CELTA course. It discusses his strengths such as humor, rapport with students, and classroom management. It also addresses how the course impacted him, specifically improving his use of drilling and eliciting. However, he still struggles with instruction check questions and comprehension check questions. The document concludes with his action plan to take additional courses to improve his grammar, pronunciation, and use of questions in the classroom.

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Alejandro Núñez
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758 views

Celta Assignment 4-Final

This document contains Alejandro Nunez's CELTA assignment which summarizes his experience in the CELTA course. It discusses his strengths such as humor, rapport with students, and classroom management. It also addresses how the course impacted him, specifically improving his use of drilling and eliciting. However, he still struggles with instruction check questions and comprehension check questions. The document concludes with his action plan to take additional courses to improve his grammar, pronunciation, and use of questions in the classroom.

Uploaded by

Alejandro Núñez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Alejandro Nunez

CELTA ASSIGNMENT 4: LESSONS FROM THE


CLASSROOM

1) Strengths, interests, qualities and experience do you feel


you brought to the course.
I decided to undertake the CELTA course to learn the basics of teaching
and independent key techniques in the classroom. One of the most rewarding
things about CELTA is the observation of experienced teachers and of fellow
trainees. During this course, I have learnt different good ways to teach the
English language to students of different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, I feel
I have grasped the concepts of the learning of teaching the English language.
As in my current job as Teaching Assistant in a primary school, I need to build
rapport with students and keep them engaged with activities during the lesson.
I consider that the sense of humour, the ability to build rapport with
students and classroom management are my most valuable qualities that I
brought to CELTA, and that I tried to exploit and put them into practice during
my teaching practices. Thus, these qualities make the lesson more student-
centred, where students are the protagonists of their own learning. When
students feel the sense of humour, they are more engaged and keen to work in
groups and in pairs as they are learning while doing. Also, I had some
professional development training before doing the course, so I could grasp key
terms and key concepts to understand the teaching of the English language.

2).How has the course impacted on all or any of these?


This course has been very beneficial to me and has had a great impact
on me as I have learnt a lot of things regarding the teaching of the English
language. Things like drilling and eliciting have made me improve my quality of
teaching. With them, I have improved my communicative skills and with drilling I
have been able to make my lessons more engaging and student-centred. Also,
eliciting has allowed me to build a context to introduce the TL to the students
with a communicative approach. The use of ICQ’s and CCQ’s however has
been the most difficult part in the teaching practices. I have struggled in giving
the adequate ICQ’s to check students’ understanding of instructions. Otherwise,
giving the adequate CCQ’s has been a very challenging part of the teaching
practices, as they must be very clear and concise questions to check students’
understanding of the TL. Because of this, the course has helped me realise how
hard it is to find the appropriate CCQ’s and how difficult it is to grade the
language for each of the levels I taught.
I have been able to adapt my teaching to non-native speakers and adult
students. In addition, the fact of observing experienced teachers and fellow

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trainees has made the greatest impact on me. I have also grasped how to give
a student-centred approach to my classes by reducing the TTT and increasing
the students’ collaboration and group and pair work. Drilling and repetition are
very important factors to take into account when teaching English to non-native
speakers, and I have always tried to use as much drilling as possible for
vocabulary.
During my class observations, I have witnessed fellow trainees using
strategies to teach that I have tried to adapt and incorporate in my lessons. I
was particularly amazed by how my fellow Matt taught grammar in upper-
intermediate level, he was very good at eliciting the form from students and at
drawing clear timelines for students to understand the form of the different past
verb tenses. This observation was very beneficial to me as I could follow his
procedures when I taught my first grammar lesson in upper-intermediate. My
tutor at that time, Robert, told me that my lesson was good and the students
understood the different uses of the past verb forms; however, he added that I
should have elicited the form from students and invite them to come to the
board and write the form on the board to make the class more student-centred.

3. What do you now consider to be your own strengths and


weaknesses as an English language teacher as the course
draws to an end?
A) Strengths
As I have been working in education for a few years, I have grasped
some techniques and strategies to teach the English language; however, I have
not had the chance to put them into practice until now. For this reason, my main
strengths in teaching have been greatly developed during the CELTA course. I
believe that classroom management and selection of activities and materials
are my main strengths. As when I was teaching in upper-intermediate level, in
my teaching practice 3 I was able to introduce students the topic through
building a scenario to create a context and to pre-teach vocabulary words with
some sense of humour that engaged students in the lesson and boosted their
attitude towards learning. The feedback of my tutor Robert was that the lesson
was good and I was able to reduce my pace of voice, so students understood
and used properly the past verb tenses; however, he claimed that the second
activity should have been freer and taken from the book.
B) Weaknesses
My lack of teaching experience in these years has led me to having some
weaknesses that have been present during my lessons. I consider that I have
had an excessive problem with lesson plans, I have had great difficulties in
anticipating problems of students and establishing clear aims for students to
achieve at the end of the lesson. I used to mix stages and skip activities. In
teaching practice 6 in pre-intermediate level I had this problem with an activity

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that I did differently from my lesson plan in the class and the feedback of my
tutor Sandie was that the lesson was very good; students were very engaged,
but there was one activity that she could not see in the lesson plan. She then
added that I needed to state clearer all my activities in the lesson plan and stick
to it and follow the order established in the plan. Furthermore, I still need to
improve in not mixing stages and stating clearer my procedures for every stage.
Also, the other main weakness that I could appreciate while reflecting on
the feedback received is the little use of ICQ’s and CCQ’s during my lessons. I
used to give the ICQ’s and CCQ’s too quickly or after giving a handout, making
instructions and concept checking confusing for students. Regarding my last
lesson in elementary level, Chris stated in her feedback that the class was good
but I forgot about the ICQ’s and CCQ’s, and students were doing the activities
in a different way I planned them. I just explained the instructions but I did not
check students’ understanding of them. ICQ’s and CCQ’s are definitely my main
weaknesses and I am doing my best to work on them and give them properly
during the class to check students’ understanding.

4. What is your post-CELTA Action Plan in order to continue


your professional development?
After these weeks of CELTA course and of teaching practices, I have
realised that I might need to solidify my knowledge in English language teaching
grammar and pronunciation. Therefore, my goals for the future are oriented to
improve my weaknesses: grading my language according to the level of
students, giving proper and clear instructions to students, and drilling as much
as possible. Hence, I believe that one of the best ways to continue developing
and improving my teaching skills is attending some professional development
courses and workshops, as they are a great opportunity to share knowledge
and ideas for classroom activities with other teachers. Therefore, my main goal
is to teach English to adults in the United Kingdom or overseas and having the
chance of applying and putting in practice all the knowledge and techniques
learnt during the CELTA course.

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