July 3rd A #CELTAchat summary by Annie Thomson
It was a select gathering J
of Tweeters @fionaljp, @bellinguist, @GioLic1976, @admiralwamy and @anniethomson78 sharing thoughts
about whether TP points for trainees are
always coursebook-based and if so, is this best practice?
Teaching Practice (TP) points whether written or oral are in
some ways one of the most challenging parts of running a CELTA course. What can
we use to meet both student and trainee needs?
The reality
It seems like a lot of us do use coursebook-based TP points. This may be because these are
provided by the institutions where the CELTA is running and tutors are expected
to use them.
The question quickly moved on to whether this was useful or
not, especially when these coursebooks can be very dated (I love the Cutting
Edge series but can’t believe I still have to work with the text about the
‘young’ Olsen twins!). Of course, we can get trainees to rewrite and update
texts where appropriate, but that’s a lot of work, and for some trainees that
may be asking too much, especially early on in the course.
Most of us try to pick and choose the most
interesting/appropriate parts of the coursebook for TP points, but this is not
always possible with restrictions on how much coursebook is available per
course. There was some agreement though, that it is good to mix these with non coursebook-based
points where possible. For example, the last trainee of the TP may extend the
topic/text/language point beyond the coursebook.
What are the
advantages and disadvantages of using coursebooks for TP points?
Advantages
|
Disadvantages
|
-Trainees will need to be able to use and exploit the coursebook in
future so this is a useful skill to learn
-Trainees will also be able to see how tutors use coursebooks to plan
lessons
-Coursebooks have Teacher Books and Resource Books to give more
support to trainees, e.g. with guidance and extra ideas.
-Students can have a sense of progress and see some coherence over
the course
-It’s a time saver for tutors, especially with large groups of
trainees. To some extent, these can be written/sketched out beforehand.
|
- Trainees benefit from seeing tutors planning without the coursebook.
- Relevance of coursebooks to students’ and trainees’ lives and
contexts (a real example I have had recently:
trainees from the USA doing CELTA in Ecuador using a UK-based
coursebook!)
|
So a coursebook isn’t
used as the basis for TP points, then what is?
As well as heaps of authentic listening and reading
material, there were a number of good ideas of sources and materials to use.
Just because you’re not using the coursebook, doesn’t mean
there is no support!
It was noted in the chat that this sort of approach would
really depend on both/all tutors being committed to this type of TP point and
there may well be trainees who are less willing to be creative, so as with
anything, it may not be best in all cases.
Input and assignments
The discussion naturally led on to discussing how to make
the link between TP points, input and assignments stronger and more useful for
trainees. A lot of people were in favour of setting Language Skills Assignment
as the first one of the course so that trainees gain confidence in designing
their own lessons and using authentic materials early on in the course. In
addition, input sessions on authentic materials will often double as a way to
revisist and further explore receptive skills work.
Conclusions
So there seemed to be some acknowledgement that TP points
are usually coursebook-based and there are some clear reasons for doing this,
namely to enable trainees to work with and exploit coursebooks in their future
teaching. However, there was a strong feeling that TP points should not be exclusively
coursebook-based, with the internet there are more than enough sources of
lesson ideas as well as authentic materials.
Here is the link to the Storify in case I
missed anything.
A big thank you to everyone who participated and especially
to Fiona @fionaljp , @bellinguist, and @GioLic1976 for moderating 😊
Annie Thomson
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