Celta – Pre-Course Task

CELTA Pre-Course

Task 1

1. My CELTA course will be within a multilingual group in a fairly small mixed-gender class.
2. Fellow students will all have some kind of formal education.
3. After finishing my CELTA I’ll probably teach both one-to-one lessons and lessons in monolingual groups.

Task 2

1. I decided to teach adults partly because it will be easier to find employment in this context but I also like the idea of teaching to someone who voluntarily chose to learn the subject.
2. I can bring my experience as a language learner and teacher of my own language.
3. Adult learners are motivated to learn because they have chosen to study the subject. They may already speak several languages. They are usually disciplined. They may have ideas and expectations about how the class should go.

Task 3

1. I would like to find out what other languages they speak, their level of education, and their reason for wanting to learn English. I also think it would be useful to know about their interest and hobbies and their expectation for the course.
2. If the lesson is one to one I can ask the person directly. If it is a group class I might make them fill in a questionnaire.

Task 4.

1. I believe the most challenging learners would be the ones who are studying English because of pressure from their parents.

Task 5

1. I would say a sense of humor, patience, enthusiasm, gives clear information and feedback, friendliness.

Task 6

1. I associate grammar with logic, good writing, dryness (in the context of language learning), something difficult to memorize.

Task 7

1. Correct
2. I went to the movies last night
3. He often comes late.
4. Correct.
5. Can I have a black coffee, please?
6. People with 12 items or fewer can queue here.

Task 8

First of all, grammar is part of the teaching of a language and a teacher needs to know the subject he/she is teaching. It is also important that the students trust their teachers and can rely on them for any doubts or questions. Not knowing the answer to their questions makes them doubt your teaching skills and discourages them from learning.

Task 9

1. pronoun
2. article
3. conjunction
4. adverb
5. adjective
6. verb
7. demonstrative adjective
8. preposition
9. verb
10. noun

Task 10

1. Lexical
2. Lexical
3. Auxiliary
4. Auxiliary
5. Auxiliary
6. Lexical

Task 11

1. lexical
2. auxiliary
3. auxiliary
4. lexical
5. lexical
6. lexical
7. auxiliary
8. lexical

Task 12

1-C 2-E 3-B 4-A 5-D

Task 13 

1. past tense form
2. –ing form
3. 3rd person –present simple tense
4. base form
5. past participle form

Task 14 Hear – heard – heard – irregular, Do – did – done – irregular, Help – helped – helped – irregular, Think – thought-thought – irregular, Take – took – taken – irregular, Steal – stole – stolen – irregular, Go – went – gone – irregular, Drink – drank – drunk – irregular, Arrive – arrived – arrived – regular.

Task 15

1. Past progressive active.
2. Past modal perfectly active.
3. Present perfect active.
4. Past progressive passive.
5. Past active
6. Modal progressive active.

Task 16 

1. Present continuous
2. Past simple 3
3. Present simple
4. Past perfect
5. Present simple
6. Future perfect
7. Past simple – Past continuous
8. Present perfect continuous

Task 17 

1. Past
2. Future
3. Past up until the present
4. Present
5. Present (maybe past and future too)

Task 18

1. The verb “to be”.
2. The “ing” form.

Task 19

1. – Future
2. – The action takes place regularly (past, present, future)
3. – Past
4. – the action takes place in the moment of the story

Task 20

All these verbs cannot be used in the progressive form. The simple present should be used in these cases.

Task 21

How the word is pronounced. If it is a noun, adjective, verb, pronoun, etc. If it is a noun if it is countable or uncountable. If it is a verb if it is transitive or intransitive. Bigger dictionaries also provide examples of usage.

Task 22 

1. “Highest” is incorrect. When speaking about people’s heights the adjective “tall” is used.
2. “Enervated” is a very formal word – not appropriate in this context.
3. “Pretentious” has a negative connotation and conflicts with the statement that it is a good essay
4. A slap cannot be loving
5. The footing is not used

Task 23

1. Adverb-adjective collocation
2. Verb-noun collocation, verb-noun collocation
3. Adverb-adjective collocation
4. Verb-preposition collocation
5. Adverb-adjective collocation
6. Verb-preposition collocation; adjective-noun collocation

Task 24

1-B; 2-C; 3-A Task 25 1-B; 2-C; 3-A

Task 26 

1. Their
2. South
3. Language.
4. Peaceful
5. Young
6. Call
7. Search
8. Equation
9. Sugar

Task 27

1. guarantee
2. cavalry
3. mechanisation
4. language
5. retreat
6. speculative
7. success
8. balance
9.  identity
10. articulate

Task 28

Photograph, photography, photographer, photographic To record/a record, to increase/an increase, to present/a present, to import/an import They may experience problems because the words have the same root but the stress falls in different syllables.

Task 29

Mother, forget, announce, tonight, notable, mention, patrol, indicative.

Task 30

Work-related email – read carefully paying attention to all the details, Short newspaper articles – read to understand the message of the text Long newspaper articles – browsing through, trying to grasp the main message

Task 31

1. Gist reading/Reading to infer
2. Scan reading
3. Reading to infer
4. Gist reading/Intensive reading

Task 32

It is time-consuming, can put the person off. It is difficult to keep the interest alive when you have to pause every two minutes. It is also useless as the main information can be obtained even without understanding all the words.

Task 33

They may have studied the language in the past in their native country and learned the phonetic sounds differently (it happened to me) so they don’t recognize the words. When reading you know when a word starts and ends when listening it is not always so. In reading, you have more time to process information.

Task 34

I was listening to a friend. I did that in two ways. We were first chatting and then discussing when and where to meet later. In the former case, I was listening to infer her point of view on things, in the second case I was listening in a way that focused on the information I needed. I also spoke to my mum. Since she does a lot of small talks I was skim listening, just making sure I could follow her thread of thoughts without paying to much attention to details.

Task 35

1. Intensive listening
2. Gist listening
3.  Scan listening
4. Intensive listening
5. Listening to infer meaning
6. Gist listening

Task 36

Learning grammar doesn’t give you the ability to speak a language. When we acquire our mother tongue we learn how to speak first and then learn the grammar. Something similar should happen when learning a new language. Listening and speaking are key.

Task 37

1. Could be clear depending on context but generally, I would say no
2. Yes
3. It is ambiguous in itself but as a reply to. A, it is understandable.

Task 38

1. Transactional
2. Transactional
3. Interactional
4. Interactional
5. Transactional
6. Interactional

Task 39

They acquire confidence. They find themselves in real-life situations as opposed to just doing learning abstract things. They can learn something from the people they are talking to. They learn other, non-verbal skills, to make themselves understood and that helps the improvement of the language in the long run.

Task 40

1. S 2. W 3. S 4. S 5. W 6. S 7. S 8. W 9. W. 10. W 11. W. 12. S

Task 41

1. She threw the ball hard so it hurt hen I caught it. The words “though” and “threw” and “caught” and “caught” sound the same.
2. My brother lives in Sweden. The vowels are not pronounced. It could also be that the student’s mother tongue does not use any vowels.
3. However hard I try it never works. The confusion may come from the fact that “however” can also be used as an adverb to introduce a contrasting idea and in that case, it is followed by a comma.
4.  The student is not familiar with punctuation and capitalization.

Task 42

There are spelling issues and also cohesion and syntax mistakes. To improve the students’ writing skills I would encourage them to write and then correct their mistakes. I would also make them do a lot of reading.

Task 43

a. 3; b. 6; c. 1; d. 5; e. 2; f. 7 Task 44 1. f; 2. g; 3. b; 4. e; 5. i; 6. h. 7. d 8. c. 9. a

Task 45

1. the word is idiomatic and probably unknown to the student. Can be substituted with “write that down”.
2. too indirect – can be confusing
3. Substitute with: Look at question number answer it
4. too many instructions at the same time.
5. After they complete the task: Compare the answer with the person next to you. After they complete the task: Write a short summary and story and discuss it with your partner.
6. Ambiguous. Substitute with “Answer the question at the bottom of the page”.

Task 46

1. Working in a group is vital to improve your communication skills and acquire fluency. Students interacting in a group reinforce their own learning.
2. If I translate everything you become dependant on translation. You do not learn a language by simply translating. It can also occur that there is no one-to-one translation from your language to English.
3. Prejudice is not tolerated in this classroom. If you want to learn you have to set aside all prejudice and be open to difference. Without this open mindset, you cannot learn.
4. Books are important in giving you a structure and allowing you to review at home.

Task 47

I would arrange the classroom so that the students playing the assistant and those asking the questions are facing each other. I could use pictures of different language schools and handouts with course information. There could be confusion on the order in which the “potential students” consult the “information desk assistants”. Some students may finish earlier than others.

Task 48

1. I would explain that “slim” is the opposite of fat and usually has a positive connotation while “thin” means very slim, possibly too slim, and can have a negative connotation. I would then make examples of famous people who are either slim of thin. Maybe I would ask students to provide examples too.
2. In this case, I would mime the two gestures.
3. I would explain that the first expression refers to something that happened regularly in the past while the second one refers to the present and it means that I always get up early so it is not a problem for me.
4. I would explain that “nervous” means agitated and “upset” means worried or sad about something. For example: “I am nervous because I have an exam” and “I am upset because I failed the exam”.
5. The first expression refers to the present time so it is for 4 weeks back from now. The second one for weeks back from some specific event. Eg. “Four weeks ago I went to the doctor. ” Four weeks before my trip I went to the doctor”. I might also express this graphically with a drawing.

Task 49 

1. I think the reason the students could not answer questions about the text is that they were to focus on reading it correctly to pay attention to the content. Personally I would let them read silently and then ask questions.
2. In this case, it may be that the topic they were asked to discuss was too advanced and students did not have sufficient vocabulary to tackle it. I would change it to something easier.

Task 50

A teacher is a professional and, like all professionals, has to adhere to certain rules. All the points indicated are part of a teacher’s responsibility towards the students and the institution he/she is working for.