Six tips for improving your timing in your CELTA lessons

How can I improve my timing?

When I think back on the questions I've been asked as a CELTA tutor, one of the ones I've got most often from trainee teachers, especially from strong trainee teachers, is "How can I improve my timing?" I'll hold my hands up now and say that my timing isn't always great when I'm teaching. There are some lessons where I don't cover anything as much as I'd planned to and others where I fly through activities much faster than I expected to, and that leads me to the main piece of advice I would give a teacher worried about this.

1. Don't expect perfection: teaching is a human craft. We're not working with wood or metal or spreadsheets. We're working with human beings and sometimes students will be in a bad mood, or will be excited or distracted, or will be sleepy or argumentative. They're human beings and so a lesson cannot necessarily be contained in exact parameters!

2. Focus on your main aim: Sometimes, we can be relieved that the topic of our lesson is working. We've organised a lead-in that's really got students interested and has got them talking. It's really enjoyable and we don't want to interrupt the conversation. However, it's important that we do, especially in shorter, CELTA-style lessons that are only 40-45 minutes long. A lead-in should introduce a topic. It should generate interest in a topic. It's not the main focus of the lesson and so you have to be firm and to move on from it to ensure you get to your main aim.

3. Don't overplan: There are times when we want to demonstrate everything we can do, when we think of a really appealing context and a fun game to practice and we've found an excellent practice task online and we want to do it all. We want the students to benefit from all the great ideas we've had and we want our tutors to see just how well we've planned. This is admirable, but we have to be practical. In a 40 minute lesson, between four and six stages is all we can realistically hope to complete.

4. Be realistic: When you plan your first lessons, you have no way of knowing how long an activity will take. Watch your tutors' and colleagues' lessons. How long do tasks take in their lessons? Do you have similar tasks in your plan? This will help you come up with a realistic guideline for your own plans. Do the tasks yourself. Which ones take you longest to complete? How long does it take you to read the text and answer the questions in your lesson?

5. Have a back-up plan: I always recommend trainee teachers look at the final activity in their lesson plan and think about what they'll do if they get to that stage and there are still fifteen to twenty minutes left in the lesson and what they'll do if they get to that stage and there's only a minute and a half left. Can the activity be stretched or squashed as needs be? Do you have a few extra discussion questions on the topic of your lesson in your back pocket if you need them? If you see yourself running out of time at the halfway point in your lesson, what can you jettison?

6. Be kind to yourself!: I've seen trainee teachers beat themselves up after perfectly good lessons. They've contextualised some new language well for students and they've clarified key elements of meaning, pronunciation and form and the students have got practice of that language, but because the teacher didn't get to do the fun oral practice task at the end of the lesson, they feel like the lesson was a failure. This isn't the case. Look back on the lesson and ask yourself if you've achieved your main aim, and if the students have learned or practised something useful. If the answer to those questions is yes, then the fact that you didn't get to your final activity is no reason to be upset.

More teaching tips

About the author:

Dr Connor O'Donoghue hails from Ireland and he started teaching English as a foreign language in Poland in 2003 and he became a CELTA trainer in 2008. He has taught and trained in Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. Connor also holds a Masters and a PhD in Education from Trinity College in Dublin. He has previously managed large teacher training centres in Vietnam and in London before founding DC Teacher Training.