Part of learning anything is to practise it. When I was a teenager and I learned to drive in Ireland in the 1990s, my father took me to...

When we meet people at the end of their CELTA courses, one of the comments they often make is that they didn't realise just how much time...

Reading and listening are known as the 'receptive skills' because we receive language while reading and listening. The other language...

Students all make mistakes, and it's important we respond to these. When students are speaking in class, and a teacher hears a mistake,...

One of the most important skills to learn as a new teacher is the skill of checking students' understanding. We might think we're...

Most grammar or vocabulary lessons on an English teaching course, be it an online CELTA course or a classroom CELTA, will start with some...

On a CELTA course, you'll be encouraged to get students to do most tasks by themselves, maybe working alone or in pairs or groups, and...

New teachers sometimes think that 'controlled practice' means 'boring practice'. It's true that controlled practice activities include...

Some CELTA tutors will avoid giving trainees writing lessons to teach, even though it is part of the syllabus. It is true that it's...

Some parts of writing a lesson plan are easier than others, and many CELTA trainees complain that they just don't know where to start...

Drilling simply means repeating things aloud. It's one of the simplest language teaching tools we have and it's one of the ones we've...

As you progress through a CELTA course, you will start to get comfortable with all the things you need to do when you're teaching new...

Every lesson is essentially a sequence of activities. Activities come in all shapes and sizes, but ideally, they are student-centred, and...

Students, even students who can speak, read and write well in English, often struggle with listening exercises in class, and there are...

Learning new words is one of the most important parts of learning a new language. You may be able to get your meaning across with poor...

Not all students are the same, but in most of the classes I've taught, when I've asked students what they want to do more of, speaking...

I once worked with a Director of Studies who said that when she was hiring someone for a teaching job, the first thing she always checked...