CELTA stands for “Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults”. It is the original certificate course in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) or teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), and it has been running for four decades. It is highly respected and recognized globally, with 7 out of 10 employers worldwide asking applicants to have it.
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Author: Mark Wilson. Article originally published in issue no. 36 of the IH Journal. What is it that defines a good teacher? Is it the competencies? The expertise? The skills? This article urges us to bring back to the core of teacher assessment what......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Coaching is usually associated with top Executives and laborious, high-priced individual sessions leading to the achievement of specific management objectives. Nothing to do with language teaching. And yet. What if you, the language teacher, had the power and ability to coach......
Authors: Sandy Millin. Article originally published in issue no. 37 of the IH Journal. Completing the whole DELTA course and acquiring the Diploma involves going through 3 course modules, each with their demanding, challenging, distinct experience. Sharing that complex experience isn’t very common, so......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Take a moment to think and remember: when was the last time someone dear told you, gazing at you reprovingly, and perhaps in a certain tone of voice, “You’re such a teacher!…” That’s because sometimes, in social, non-teaching contexts, when we’re......
Author: Ilinca Stroe A teacher who wants to keep developing needs to keep on learning – it’s common knowledge. Only by continuing to learn can we keep abreast of the latest developments in our field, avoid getting complacent and stagnating in an uninspiring comfort......
Author: Olga Cherrington. Article originally published in issue no. 37 of the IH Journal. We like to think that when our young learners hear the word “competition” they jump right at it. But it is with joy or…? This article questions the use of......
Author: Sandy Millin. Article originally published in issue no. 38 of the IH Journal. You’ve gained quite some teaching experience, you’ve even done your DELTA and you’re now eager to move up the career ladder. What will it be, a DoS post? Before aiming......
Author: Ilinca Stroe This year, while International House (IH) Bucharest has reached 20 years of existence in Romania, its Teacher Training Centre is turning 3. Its activity during this time highlights the striking features that best describe it: tremendously bold and ambitious, very energetic,......
Author: Alex Zagorac. Article originally published in issue no. 38 of the IH Journal. Memorising new words isn’t something that happens to your students in just one class. Or is it? If we used in our classes a variety of memory techniques, wouldn’t our......
Author: Anya Shaw and Veronique Ward. Article originally published in issue no. 38 of the IH Journal. Are you sometimes at your wits’ ends trying to motivate your teenage students to practise a bit of writing? This entertaining article, apart from a pleasure to read,......
In 2002, one of the relatively few language centres based in Bucharest, Romania, decided to join the International House network. IH Bucharest was born. Since then it has grown from 6 to about 150 teachers, from a dozen of client companies to 400, and it......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Someone walks into a language school wishing to enrol on an English course. One of the first questions they’re bound to be asked is, “Have you studied English before?” It’s the preliminary step to ascertaining their current level of English, which......
Author: Anthony Ash. Article originally published in issue no. 38 of the IH Journal. How many times have you had to urge your students in class, “English please!”? While their mother tongue (L1) can come in handy at times, for example to peer-teach difficult......
Author: Alastair Grant. Article originally published in issue no. 38 of the IH Journal. The stages of a typical reading lesson tend to be rather fixed. Following them we are probably correct, but we risk missing out on a very significant thing: our students’......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Set up in May 2019, the Teacher Training Centre of International House (IH) Bucharest ran five CELTA courses in 2021: three part-time and two full-time, all online. That is ambitious for a relatively new centre, and prospective trainees might ask themselves,......
Author: David Petrie. Article originally published in issue no. 39 of the IH Journal. Generally speaking, writing isn’t precisely the students’ cup of tea… And when they have to practice writing for exams (IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge suite), they might be extra reluctant. This article......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Teachers’ conferences are not common. Google, and you’ll see. A few a year occur in the world, some for tertiary-level professionals, some about school policies, but very few for regular teachers who simply want to learn something new from experts in......
Author: Yvette Phipps. Article originally published in issue no. 39 of the IH Journal. How easy is it for you to manage your young learner classes? Getting your YLs to work with you efficiently can be challenging. This article gives you a useful,......
Author: Kylie Malinowska. Article originally published in issue no. 39 of the IH Journal. Do you teach very young learners? Do you often find yourself dizzily surrounded by a bunch of swarming, giggling under-fives? That’s a lot of fun, but very little teaching…......
Author: Maria Conca. Article originally published in issue no. 39 of the IH Journal. Do your young learners in the English class often go off on a tangent in their mother tongue? Why is it that they find it hard to listen to......
(Continued from Part I) In the first part of this article we determined that writing your own teaching materials can be a matter of having professional fun, but also of meeting your students’ unique needs by designing tailor-made exercises especially for them. And......
Author: Wayne Rimmer. Article originally published in issue no. 39 of the IH Journal. Is there more to practising pronunciation than just “listen and repeat”? This article claims that, yes, pronunciation can be taught and practised in more interesting and fun ways via materials......
Author: Yvonne Dagan. Article originally published in issue no. 40 of the IH Journal. So you’ve started your post-CELTA job search, perhaps ready to launch on an international career. But are you really ready to choose the right TEFL job? Can you negotiate the......
Author: Yvonne Dagan. Article originally published on the IH Journal of Education and Development blog. So you’ve done your CELTA and are now eager to launch on an international career. But are you really ready to plunge into the TEFL job market? Are......
Coffee @ IH Bucharest: 6 reasons to join this training series Author: Ilinca Stroe What’s Coffee@IH Metting world-class trainers Finding out about the latest trends An amazing variety of training topics Getting the recording of the session Getting an attendance certificate Giving feedback......
Author: Ilinca Stroe The Teacher Training Centre of International House Bucharest became just about a year ago the only place accredited to run all the three modules of the DELTA course in Romania. Of course, we were planning to provide the modules face to......
Author: Ilinca Stroe In a world brimming with teaching ideas and activities, why would any teacher still want to write their own teaching materials? Well, the answers vary from “Because they feel creative and find it fun!” to “Because they’re too busy to do......
Author: Lee McCallum. Article originally published in issue no. 40 of the IH Journal. Have you ever been in a situation where you had to provide comfort to students terrified by exams? While reassuring them they can do it and building up self-confidence are......
Author: Chris Ożóg. Article originally published in issue no. 40 of the IH Journal. Are you considering taking the next step in your teaching career and become a teacher trainer? Before enrolling on a DELTA course and reaching that goal, you might want to......
Author: Sandy Millin. Article originally published in issue no. 41 of the IH Journal. How many times have your students asked you about the origin of some English words or idioms? How many times have you asked yourself about the origin of your profession......
Author: Maureen McGarvey. Article originally published in issue no. 41 of the IH Journal. We all come from families whose values impact our work ethics and style. This article shares a few of those family values (of Scottish and Irish extraction) which can inspire......
Author: Ilinca Stroe. Films over the past half-century have depicted some of the most common teacher and educator stereotypes: the demanding but creative nanny with superpowers who manages to discipline even the most misbehaving brats (Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee); the dedicated activist teacher who......
Author: Scott Thornbury. Article originally published in issue no. 41 of the IH Journal. It’s sometimes just pleasant to sit and listen to senior counterparts who simply know better because they’ve “been there” and “done that”. And when the experienced teacher is TEFL celebrity......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Any respectable well-established school will ask its teachers to write and hand their students progress reports on a regular basis (once a semester, say). That goes for young learner classes as well as adult groups, and the reports usually have a......
Author: David Petrie. Article originally published in issue no. 41 of the IH Journal. Getting your students prepared for the Reading paper of a Cambridge exam can be a bit of a pain. Because students, especially teenagers, aren’t particularly keen on reading. So how......
Author: Katy Simpson. Article originally published in issue no. 42 of the IH Journal. We don’t often think about gender equality in a heavily female-populated industry such as ELT. And yet there are a few issues worth considering. How do you manage pregnancy and......
“Thank you for this amazing experience, this was one of the best teacher training courses I’ve attended, by far. :)” (Laura, January 2021 CELTA graduate at IH Bucharest) Author: Ilinca Stroe The Teacher Training Centre of International House Bucharest took off in May......
Author: Emily Herd. Article originally published in issue no. 42 of the IH Journal. Is it your job as a YL English teacher to deal with gender stereotypes and budding sexism in your classes? Well, as long as some textbooks work with gender roles,......
Author: Ilinca Stroe There are people who enrol on a CELTA course to become qualified teachers of English without really knowing whether teaching is right for them. Despite the alluring prospect of getting an international certificate which can land them a job anywhere in......
Author: Anastasiya Shalamay. Article originally published in issue no. 48 of the IH Journal. You’re basically a face-to-face teacher who’s had to transfer their in-presence teaching skills online. Have you noticed all the differences between the two ways of teaching? What changes do you......
Author: Thomas Entwistle. Article originally published in issue no. 48 of the IH Journal. Do you have classes where all the students come from the same mother tongue? Monolignual classes pose specific challenges for teachers, e.g. the extended use of L1 in class. This......
Author: Claire Parsons. Article originally published in issue no. 48 of the IH Journal. Correcting your students’ spoken English is always a topic of interest. Is it better to correct on the spot or to resort to delayed correction? And what type of errors......
Author: Xana de Nagy. Article originally published in issue no. 48 of the IH Journal. Have you at some point taught kids? If you’re an ex-YL teacher, this article will certainly make you miss those times! If you’re still currently teaching children, you’ll certainly......
Author: Ilinca Stroe On some CELTA courses, the trainees are taught that, irrespective of the lesson type they teach (whether it’s skills, vocabulary or grammar), there is a lesson stage they should always include in their planning: “post-activity correction slot” (PACS). The term, although......
Author: Sandy Millin. Article originally published in issue no. 48 of the IH Journal. How did it feel, 6 months after the outbreak of the pandemic, to try and “reinvent” yourself as an online teacher working in a school which had gone online, too?......
Author: Sandy Millin. Article originally published in issue no. 48 of the IH Journal. It’s been almost a year now and it’s perhaps time we looked back and reflected on it all: how has our work as language teachers changed since the onset of......
Author: David Petrie. Article originally published in issue no. 42 of the IH Journal. Do you teach classes leading to (Cambridge) exams? If so, you’ve probably wondered whether the repeated (indeed, sometimes suffocating) exam practice really develops your students’ English. This article puts forward some......
Author: Maureen Mcgarvey. Article originally published in issue no. 42 of the IH Journal. Did you know that teaching is one of the most stressful jobs? Oh, didn’t you!… We have to fulfill a multitude of roles, from mentor to caretaker, while juggling a multitude......
Making Projects Fun with Apps Author: Marianne Jones. Article originally published in issue no. 42 of the IH Journal. Especially in the context of compulsory online teaching because of, say, a pandemic, doing projects in the language classroom can provide such beneficial variety! This article......
How to Learn a Language Every Day Author: Sandy Millin. Article originally published in issue no. 42 of the IH Journal. If as a language teacher you keep learning languages, you’re much closer to your own students’ experience, therefore you can give them more relevant......
Does Your Teaching Match Your Students’ Different Learning Styles? A Reminder to Be Aware of Multiple Intelligences in the Language Class Author: Ilinca Stroe In order to teach our students effectively, we need to know how they learn best. During an initial qualification course such......
Author: Celestina Froude. Article originally published in issue no. 43 of the IH Journal. Are you a fresh CELTA graduate just entering the real world of teaching? If so, this article is your buddy: it gives you advice about your health and about setting boundaries......
Author: Robbie McDonald. Article originally published in issue no. 43 of the IH Journal. Your career advancement aspirations are important. But you have to work to attain them. And what better way to start off towards more senior positions than listening to a good piece......
Author: Christopher Redmond. Article originally published in issue no. 44 of the IH Journal. Do you often feel out of your depth when trying to improve your students’ fluency, especially at lower levels? What would get them to speak more, what would break those barriers......
Author: Ilinca Stroe The Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (DELTA) is the highest English teaching qualification available. Designed by Cambridge English Language Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge, it is the equivalent of a Master’s degree, highly respected......
Authors: Matt Adams and Ethan Mansur. Article originally published in issue no. 46 of the IH Journal. A very frequent (and often inconvenient) situation: you have to cover a lesson for a fellow teacher. It’s usually a last-minute request which leaves you little time......
Author: Luke Armstrong. Article originally published in issue no. 46 of the IH Journal. So your students are advanced. What’s left to teach them? What English-language novelty can you still share with them? And are they still interested? Do they feel they still have......
Author: Anastasia Nefedova. Article originally published in issue no. 47 of the IH Journal. Do you teach large classes? Can you remember all of the students’ names? Can you always keep them motivated and on track? This article gives you 7 practical ideas about how......
Author: Rory Duncan. Article originally published in issue no. 47 of the IH Journal. What makes us fail or suceeed as teachers? What are the positive and negative emotions we have to deal with and manage? How can they make a difference in our performance?......
“Teaching should be done using only the resources that teachers and students bring to the classroom – i.e. themselves – and whatever happens to be in the classroom.” (Scott Thornbury) Author: Ilinca Stroe, International House Bucharest Coursebooks, student’s books, workbooks, teacher’s handbooks, resource......
Author: Ilinca Stroe, International House Bucharest What’s the ultimate goal of language teaching? The standard description for C2, the highest CEFR level of linguistic competence, says it all: a learner who has reached the C2 level is an expert user of the language, having......
“Language is grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar.” (Michael Lewis, 1993) Author: Ilinca Stroe, International House Bucharest Teaching view 1: “one masters a language when they can use it to communicate accurately. For that point to be reached, one must learn the grammatical rules......
Author: Ilinca Stroe, International House Bucharest Teachers who had worked online as a rule before the covid-19 crisis struck and forced us all into digital immigration will probably snigger at the title. Rightly so. Full-time online teachers had already gained solid experience teaching English......
Article originally poublished on the International House World Organisation (IHWO) blog on 9 April 2020. Are you short of ideas about how to keep your students motivated and engaged during the Easter holiday? Professionals from several International House schools in Spain have come up......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 47. Authors: Miguel Talag and Ethan Mansur Isn’t PowerPoint an almost indispensable tool now that we’ve transited to teaching online because of the coronavirus pandemic? How good are you at making the best of it? Are......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 47, adapted for this site. Author: Sandy Millin. Are you struggling with the crazy amount of lesson planning you’ve got to do besides the teaching proper? Has stress become your permanent state of mind? How can......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 47, adapted for this site. Author: Tatsiana Khudayerka. Are you striving to improve your students’ ability to read fast a text in English? Do you sometimes find it hard to think of new ways of practising......
Author: Ilinca Stroe “… so she get out of the station and start walking in the dark. No one in the street and she feel a bit scary. She not know where she go, exactly.” This is one of your students telling you how......
Teo, where and when did you start teaching English as a foreign language? I started teaching in 2010 right here, at IH Bucharest. How long have you worked with International House? Tell us about your career path, please. Well, I’ll be celebrating my 10th......
Author: Ilinca Stroe, International House Bucharest Jazz isn’t the kind of music you like as a teenager. Or in your twenties. Its subtle manipulation of a symphonic range of rhythm patterns and melodic lines, its mesmerising blending and fusing, its puzzling mélange of sounds......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 47. Author: Hall Houston. Are you tired of always being in charge of the class? Are your students, on the other hand, a bit frustrated that they never get to have their say when it comes......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 47, adapted for this site. Author: Emma Gowing. Do you sense a difference between reading and listening when it comes to general talk about “receptive skills”? Do you wonder how to teach better listening classes particularly......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Whether you are a more or a less experienced teacher, surely you must have, at some point, lived a moment when, casually monitoring your students mid-activity, you were shocked to notice that they were doing something totally unrelated to what they......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 47. Author: Christopher Walker. Are you often taken aback when students ask you where a word comes from? Or are you sometimes short of mnemonic techniques that help your students remember and retain vocabulary? This article......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 44. Author: David Petrie. Are good examples always good? What if bad ones are even better? Correct your students’ bad English, by all means, but also give them plenty of chance to get their own head......
Author: Ilinca Stroe Tick tock. It’s almost here: that time of the year when we’re all starting to sense magic in the air. The world around us is turning festive and celebratory, as glittery lights and shiny colourful decorations take over the town. And......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue 44. Author: Mike Bridge. Are you occasionally taken aback by a student question like, “What does ‘youthquake’ mean?” Do you sometimes feel out of your depth trying to clarify the latest slang or tech jargon in......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 46. Author: Sandy Millin. Is your work-life balance right? Are you able to stay away from the perils of burnout? Do you know your teaching strengths well enough to build up on them? Can you......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 45. Author: Sandy Millin. Do you find it hard to teach grammar? Are you vexed that your students keep speaking their mother tongue in class, instead of English? Do you have difficulty controlling the class?......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 44. Author: Sandy Millin. Are you overly critical of your lessons? Do you often compare yourself unfavourably with other teachers? Do you feel the stress level caused by teaching is becoming rather unbearable? Whether you’re......
Author: Ilinca Stroe, International House Bucharest Imagine: teacher enters classroom. Students are all ears. Teacher announces, “Today we’re going to do Present Perfect Continuous.” Students instantly start rubbing their hands in excitement and anticipation. That, as any English teacher might already know, is......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 45. Author: Amy Gowers. Noise, fidgeting, chaos – but also enthusiasm, joy and freshness. Those are some of the effects teachers of young learners (YLs) are usually exposed to. Managing the former and harnessing the......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 45. Author: Xana de Nagy. A teacher is often supposed to be a bit of a magician: pulling rabbits out of hats, i.e. coming up with teaching ideas all the time, whether to introduce a grammar......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 46. Author: Alastair Grant. How many times have you sensed there was something of a therapy session in your teaching? How many times have you had to deal with difficult students using tools or an......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 46. Author: Phoebe Gomes. Teaching exam preparation classes can be tremendously stimulating: there’s a challenge to them, there’s a goal and there’s a time limit. It’s all an exciting countdown race. But the responsibility can......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 46. Author: Madeleine Hill. There’s no higher wish for a keen junior teacher than to become a good teacher. This article by a highly experienced IH teacher guides you towards that goal, focusing especially on......
Article originally published in the IH Journal, issue no. 46. Author: Glenn Standish. No matter how hard we try and plan, there’s always something a bit artificial about classroom tasks. This article suggests a few ways of making English more real and engaging in......
Article originally published on the IH Journal blog. Diana England is DoS at IH Torres Vedras and has had a teaching career which has taken her around the globe. Among the many places visited, Romania stood out for its “teachers and trainers who were......
Alex, where and when did you start teaching English as a foreign language? I was 19 years old, and I taught Tibetan Buddhist monks in a monastery in the north of India. I loved the experience but I was, despite my lack of experience,......
Úna, when and where did you start teaching English as a foreign language? Tell us about your background in TEFL. I started my English teaching career in Budapest, Hungary, back in 2003. It was a fantastic first experience, as I met really talented, motivated......
Robert, when and where did you start teaching English as a foreign language? Tell us about your background in TEFL. I started teaching English in Bogota, Colombia, in 1994 at the Centro Colombo Americano. I had just finished college and was in Bogota when......
Article originally published on the IH Journal blog. Author: Anthony Ash. This article can be useful to teachers of English as a Foreign Language who have some teaching experience and look for variety in their lesson frameworks. Flipped Learning basically implies setting the Presentation......
Iulia, where and when did you start teaching English as a foreign language? Actually, I started my teaching career with International House Bucharest on 15th October 2009. I remember the date exactly, because this was my first ‘real’ job after uni and I was very......
The benefits of doing a CELTA course (“Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages”) are multifarious. The greatest advantage is, of course, that on successful completion of the course you get a professional qualification which is accredited by Cambridge University, and the corresponding......
Val Weston, the Director of Studies at IH Terrassa, where she has been a DoS for more than 20 years, reflects on her career in TEFL as she approaches retirement. Her career has spanned 40 years on and off, and in that time she has......
OK, so you’ve been teaching a language for a while, you’re comfortable with the job, you’ve got good feedback from your employer and students – overall, you’re getting on. Why bother doing a language teacher training course? The short answer is, because it makes the......
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