So he has decided to join the British Council’s Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) course set to be run in January at the British Council located at Lainchaur
“Teachers love the sound of themselves, and mostly classes consist of teachers talking on for hours on end while the students are mute spectators,” says CELTA certified teacher Pranay Rai who obtained the certificate in 2005 from Delhi which was the nearest centre until then.
This is where it differs from other courses. It challenges the teachers to cut down their talking time to 20% of their total class time. Apart from being an internationally certified degree, it focuses primarily on the application aspects of the language rather than the theoretical ones.
“Language is an art and more of a skill of communication rather than a conceptual discipline, such as science, for instance,” says Dewan. “Especially if it involves teaching adults, cultural nuances play a vital role,” expresses Rai. With this in mind, CELTA focuses on aiding the trainees to understand the cultural backdrop of the students in question. This, according to Rai, makes it a truly international and culture-sensitive course.
“CELTA differs from other courses because the approach to teach is learner input based,” says Anne Bell, Deputy Teaching Center Manager at the British Council. “Teaching is all about communication, and what’s more important is that CELTA focuses on making the learner maximally involved throughout the process of teaching,” she adds.
Besides, this course is most popular among a lot of people whose partners have a traveling job. “CELTA is a Cambridge Certified Course, and as such, it makes you globally marketable in terms of getting a job as an English teacher,” she adds. She says that some prospective students who intended to travel to the nearest CELTA centers in Thailand, Bangladesh and India have sighed with relief to know that this course has come to town.
“Getting a Masters Degree in English does not make you a good English teacher, and a Master’s degree in Education is too vast to train you to teach English as a language,” opines Dewan.
For him, teaching and learning are two different things. The best teachers are not necessarily the brightest of students, and vice versa. The best teachers need to look out for the slow learners of the class and make them up to the mark rather than concentrate to brain feed the already intelligent ones.
Being approachable to students is another challenge for teachers in general and more so for language teachers. In this regard, accessing the target audience, therefore, becomes a prime tool to impart language skills. Often, students in Nepal and elsewhere do not approach the teachers for the fear of being ridiculed.
“This is especially true in the case of adults who have a full sociological realization of their ego and social standing,” says Rai. The motivations of the learner are to be taken into consideration. He advocates CELTA as a training ground for making English lessons more fruitful.
Spread over a period of four weeks (120 hours) and open to individuals above 20 years of age, the course is divided into four subheadings: 1) Techniques and strategies for teaching; 2) Language awareness, i.e., grammar and phonology; 3) Supervised and observed teaching practice to groups of elementary and intermediate learners; and 4) Guidelines for further professional development after the course. It boasts daily inputs and extensive feedback for the trainer as well.
The cost of the course is Rs. 125,000 and it may be disheartening to many. However, Dewan thinks this is a good investment.
“It is certified by Cambridge and it gives the degree global selling ability and expands your options manifold,” he explains. “It teaches me to shift the focus out of the teacher into the students such that it makes language learning a more effective phenomenon, helping me groom myself as a teacher; and it has augmented my understanding of people in general,” says Rai.
(CELTA is starting at the British Council from January 18 to February 12, 2010. The deadline of applications is November 30, 2009)
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