CELTA cheat sheet

CELTA requires a minimum of six hours of assessed teaching practice, delivered over at least eight lessons, with at least two groups of learners at different levels.

A written lesson plan is submitted before every assessed lesson: main and subsidiary aims, anticipated problems with solutions, staged procedure with stage aims, timing, interaction patterns and materials.

Language lessons typically follow PPP (presentation, practice, production) or Test-Teach-Test; guided discovery is used when learners can infer a rule from examples.

Receptive skills staging: lead-in, pre-teach only essential lexis (roughly five to eight items), gist task, detailed task, post-task follow-up; productive staging: lead-in, model or prepare, draft or perform, feedback.

CCQs (concept checking questions) check understanding of meaning and are closed or yes/no; ICQs (instruction checking questions) confirm learners know what to do. Both are planned in advance.

Teacher language is graded to the learners' level: short sequenced instructions, demonstration, and reduced speed and complexity.

Interaction patterns (whole class, open pairs, closed pairs, groups, individual) are selected to serve each stage aim, with the general goal of maximising student talking time.

Error correction rule: treat errors that block communication or that target the lesson's language; use immediate correction in controlled accuracy work and delayed, board-based correction after fluency tasks.

Each assessed lesson is followed by trainer written and oral feedback against the published assessment criteria plus a trainee self-evaluation; the final grade (Pass, Pass B, Pass A) requires all criteria met and all four assignments passed.

There are four written assignments; each is expected to be 750 to 1000 words, and all four must be passed to be awarded the certificate.

Each assignment is graded pass, resubmit or fail; Cambridge permits one resubmission per assignment, so a second failure of the same piece means failing the course.

Assignment 1 (language analysis) analyses meaning, form and pronunciation of specified items, anticipates learner problems and proposes teaching solutions with reference to grammar reference works.

Assignment 2 (focus on the learner) profiles one learner's background and needs, analyses a sample of their spoken or written work, and recommends activities with justification.

Assignment 3 (skills) requires choosing authentic material, justifying it for a named group, and designing and evaluating gist and detailed skills tasks.

Assignment 4 (lessons from the classroom) is reflective: it identifies strengths and development priorities from the trainee's own teaching and sets evidence-based action points.

Language and methodology claims must be attributed to sources using author-date citation and a reference list; unattributed copying is treated as malpractice.

Word count typically excludes the reference list and appendices but includes the main body and in-text argument; centre conventions should be confirmed.

Assignments must be grounded in the trainee's own learners and lessons, quoting concrete evidence such as learner utterances, errors or lesson extracts rather than generic statements.