If you can’t get to a CELTA course, then let the CELTA course come to you
Up until this year, if you wanted to take your first steps into English Language Teaching, you generally had to find a CELTA training centre close to home, or travel to one of the many centres worldwide. This was positive in many ways, but it came with high costs, both financial and in terms of convenience.
So if we can thank COVID-19 for one thing, it might be for the massive technological push to enable effective face-to-face communication online, which now makes it possible for established CELTA centres like ours to take our decades of experience in teacher training and bring it to you, wherever in the world you are.
The CELTA 100% Online course is really two courses for the price of one: not only do you receive the complete CELTA teacher training course, supported by highly qualified and respected tutors and rewarded with an internationally recognised qualification in the end, but you also gain a highly practical introduction to teaching online, which is only going to become more common in future.
But getting two courses for the price of one sounds too good to be true: there has to be a catch. Maybe the price you pay is increased intensity and stress, as centres try to cram the course along with training you how to use the platforms into the old 4-week format? Don’t worry – our CELTA 100% Online course runs over five weeks to allow plenty of time to introduce you not only to the online systems we will be using, but also for you to meet and work with your actual English students before we even start assessing your teaching.
Combining synchronous (i.e. face-to-face) and asynchronous (i.e. in your own time) modes of delivery and assessment, and using tools that you are either already familiar with or which are highly intuitive such as Google Drive/Google Docs and Zoom, you can feel confident that your entry into the course and into teaching will be as smooth and supported as possible.
In the end, the qualification – the Level 5 Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA), awarded by Cambridge Assessment English – is the same, whether you take the course face to face or 100% Online. However, by taking the CELTA 100% Online you also gain valuable experience teaching online, and thereby making yourself even more attractive to potential employers worldwide during these quickly-changing times.
