Doing the half-flip

with CELTA online

This is what I did with most of my intensive on-line CELTA input sessions.

I hope you find it useful 😊

What you’ll need is

1. a back-channel communication platform (I used Slack and/or Google Drive)
2. A live Zoom class as your delivery platform

Rationale:

Since we get a mixture of trainees in terms of language awareness, teaching experience and level of familiarity with EFL / ELT methodology, I’ve always found it prudent to set my expectations bar pretty low, in terms of already acquired course-relevant knowledge. I know most schools do the Pre-Course Task but that is no guarantee that the trainees are familiar with certain grammar concepts or with the terminology used in describing, e.g. listening skills and sub-skills.

Although this is no fault of the trainees themselves, we are still left with a rather awkward situation sometimes. There may be a couple of trainees in the group (or even more than a couple) who have taken the trouble to do some background reading and will have some idea of what teaching language entails, but in many cases the majority of trainees expect to learn all about it on the course.

This leaves us with a couple of choices:

• aim the input session overall level at complete beginners (with the danger of being rather simplistic and perhaps disappointing the more advanced of the trainees)
• go for the level of complexity and detail that you regard as appropriate for a CELTA course and … hope for the best.

I’ve also tried some middle-ground solutions with mixed results: some trainees found it helpful, others not at all.

I know that it is impossible to please everyone and that the course content cannot be terribly flexible and customisable, but I think I’ve found a way to make this whole process a bit more palatable. Here we go!

Procedure:

• A few days before the input session in question, let’s say Pronunciation 1- Individual sounds, I upload some materials on Slack, together with a message explaining what needs to be done with them. For this particular session, these may include an interactive phonemic symbol chart, diagrams or other visuals showing articulator placement for groups of phonemes, some teaching materials with pronunciation exercises and perhaps a presentation with the main points for the session.

Note: The materials I choose can vary depending on the group’s overall level of familiarity with the topic and their tendency to be more or less autonomous in their learning.

• These materials are usually accompanied with specific tasks which require the trainees to engage with them and spend some time pondering specific points that usually come up during the session. Again, the tasks vary in terms of depth and autonomy needed to complete them: from simply preparing a list of questions for the tutor to answer during the session to doing certain pronunciation exercises and pinpointing difficulties to evaluating teaching materials.
• From this point onwards, I take it for granted that the trainees have studied the materials and that I can start the session with answering trainees’ questions re what they’ve studied. For me, this levels the playing field and helps everyone start from the same point.
• During the actual session, I begin with feedback on the tasks completed, answering any questions or going into more detail into certain more obscure points (if needed). Then I try to spend most of the session time with trainees designing a pronunciation task or two focusing on specific sounds. Finally, they can try their tasks on each other and see what worked or not.

And… that’s it! You have now done the half-flip: part of your session was studied beforehand by the trainees and most of the live session was spent either troubleshooting or practising task design!