assignments in celta

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What's in the celta course.

The CELTA course covers the principles of effective teaching, and gives you a range of teaching techniques and practical experience. You get hands-on teaching practice and observation of experienced teachers, and you’ll apply your learning by delivering communicative teaching with English language learners.

Course format summary

The celta course in detail.

CELTA courses are delivered by authorised centres on behalf of Cambridge English. All CELTA courses include at least 120 hours of contact between candidates and course tutors, and include:

tutorial support and consultation
supervised lesson planning
6 hours’ assessed teaching practice per candidate supervised by a course tutor
feedback on teaching practice
peer observation of teaching practice (i.e. watching the other candidates’ lessons)
6 hours’ directed observation of lessons taught by experienced ELT professionals, up to 3 hours of which may be of filmed lessons

You should also allow for 80 additional learning hours for pre-course preparation, reading, research, assignment writing, lesson preparation and record keeping.

The maximum ratio of candidates to tutors is one tutor for every six candidates, and there are at least two tutors on each course.

Course topics

The CELTA course covers a range of topics:

learners and teachers, and the teaching and learning context
language analysis and awareness
language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing
planning and resources for different teaching contexts
developing teaching skills and professionalism

Download a summary of the course topics

Download the CELTA syllabus

How you will be assessed

You will be assessed throughout the course and there is no final examination. The two types of assessment are:

Teaching practice

You will teach for a total of 6 hours, working with adult classes at a minimum of two levels of ability. Assessment is based on your overall performance.

Written assignments

You will complete four written assignments (each 750–1,000 words). These focus on:

analysing and responding to adult learner needs
analysing language for teaching purposes
teaching language skills
reflecting on classroom teaching

Your teaching practice and written assignments are assessed by your trainers during the course. Your trainers will discuss your progress with you, including in at least two one-to-one tutorials, so you should have a good idea of your strengths and areas to focus on.

There are four possible grades for CELTA:

At the end of your course you will be given a candidate report form, which will give your provisional grade. This will also say whether you took the course face-to-face, online or as a mix of face-to-face and online.

Cambridge English will issue your certificate when grades have been confirmed. Certificates are usually despatched up to eight weeks after the completion of the course. The certificate will state your name, grade, the centre number where you took the course and the date of the award.

Start your CELTA journey

If you’ve not yet applied for your CELTA, choose from over 350 authorised centres in over 80 countries.

Find a centre

If you’ve got an interview for your CELTA or have been accepted on a course, we’ve got everything you need to prepare.

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Transcription
About language

CELTA written assignment: focus on language skill

The purpose of the assignment

The CELTA handbook explains that this assignment allows you to demonstrate that you can:

correctly use terminology that relates to language skills and subskills
relate task design to language skills development
find, select and reference information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

That's a lot to cover in 1000 words so you need to be concise and stay focused. This is not the place to discuss generalities.

This is an overview only. For more on skills, go to the initial-plus training section on skills .

The skills look like this:

The 4 main skills can be broken down into subskills (and should be). These include, very briefly and incompletely:

skimming (reading for general gist)
scanning (reading to locate details)
intensive reading (reading for the fullest possible understanding)
extensive reading (reading to follow the gist or get the general picture)
listening for relevance (rather like reading for gist)
monitoring (listening to spot something important)
intensive listening (trying to understand as much as possible)
extensive listening (listening to follow the main points of what is being said)
interaction (speaking to oil social wheels and maintain relationships with people)
transaction (speaking to get something done such as getting a service, asking for information, giving an explanation etc.)
turn-taking (understanding when to speak and when someone else wants to speak)
long turns (holding the floor, giving presentations etc.)
brainstorming
understanding the audience
planning what to write

We may focus on individual subskills but should not lose sight of the fact that people use many of them in combination or that, of course, most speaking also involves listening and much writing involves reading.

For the two receptive skills in particular, the knowledge that we use to understand can, very roughly and very briefly be divided into two sorts:

our knowledge of how a text is structured and where the important information will be
our knowledge the world around us
our knowledge the intentions of the writer or speaker
our ability to predict what will be heard or read
the sounds and writing systems of English (phonemes, connected speech phenomena, spelling, punctuation etc.)
the meaning of the lexis and idioms of the language
the grammar of the language
how links are made in texts using pronouns, conjunction and other devices

Your centre will probably give you a set of instructions for your assignments. You'd be foolish to ignore these. What follows is generic advice.

Some centres give you a choice of skills to write about, some may oblige you to focus on two specific ones and some may even give you a free hand.

This assignment is quite broadly based because the regulations require you to focus on both receptive and productive skills in relation to a piece of material or text (and for our purposes, the term 'text' applies to both written and spoken language). Before you start, review the guide to Topic 3 of the CELTA syllabus .

This is in the genre of an Information Report and it has two parts:

A brief introduction stating the focus of the assignment and why you think the area is important. For example, I have chosen to focus on reading skills using the text in the appendix, specifically on reading skills needed by elementary learners (A1 and A2 level) operating in an English speaking environment because the abilities to extract the gist of what they encounter and decide on its relevance to them are crucial. I shall also be suggesting ways to use the text as a basis for a lesson on writing a short email to a friend.
For example, if you are using the text to practise identifying the topic and reading for gist, you will need to suggest what sorts of activities you would use and, crucially, why.
Now you need to go on to outline how you would use the text as a stimulus for writing, in our example. You need to say why the text is appropriate, what skills of writing you are targeting and what the outcomes in terms of developing the learners' writing skills are going to be.
If you have the space, you may like to include a brief conclusion saying why the skill(s) may cause problems for learners. You can also include this in the discussion above, of course.
For reading Grellet, F, 1999, Developing Reading Skills , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hudson, T, 2007, Teaching Second Language Reading , Oxford: Oxford University Press
For listening Field, J, 2008, Listening in the Language Classroom , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wilson, J, 2008, How to Teach Listening , Harlow: Pearson Longman
For writing Hedge, T, 1990, Writing , Hong Kong: Oxford University Press Harmer, J, 2011, How to Teach Writing , Malaysia: Pearson Education
For speaking Bygate, M, 1987, Speaking , Oxford: Oxford University Press Thornbury, S and Slade, D, 2006, Conversation: From Description to Pedagogy , Cambridge: Cambridge Language Teaching Library Thornbury, S, 2005, How to Teach Speaking , Harlow: Longman Pearson
For all skills Hedge, T, 2000, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Graphically:

Before you submit your assignment, here's a quick checklist. You can have this as a PDF file by clicking here or you can mentally tick things off on the screen.

I have chosen a suitably limited area to analyse
I have made it clear in the introduction and the title what it is
I have analysed the subskills learners need for the skill in question
I have linked the analysis of subskills to the activities I suggest to develop each one
I have said why the skill and its subskills may present problems for learners

Now assess yourself against the criteria for the assignment. Here they are again. Have you been able to:

Your tutors will maintain a record of the work you have done on the written assignments and will grade each of the criteria as follows: NS (Not to Standard), S (at Standard) or S+ (above Standard). You need to aim consistently for S or S+ grades, naturally.

If you have managed to tick all the items, well done. Submit the assignment and move on.

This site is a good place to start but you will also, presumably, have access to references of one kind or another (see the list above). Once you have decided (or been told) which skills you are analysing, use these links to find what you want on this site:

CELTA Focus on the Learner Assignment

Published by awalls86 on february 13, 2021 february 13, 2021.

For more tips and advice about CELTA, click here .

Join my telegram channel for teachers.

Of the four assignments that you need to write for CELTA, the focus on the learner assignment tends to require the most planning. Typically, this assignment consists of finding out about the background and needs of one or more students, identifying problems they have and suggesting relevant activities to help these students. As with other CELTA assignments, the exact details of the assignment will depend on the course provider.

What do you have to do?

focusing on one particular learner;
focusing on a pair of learners;
focusing on a group of students.

Focus on one learner

If you have to focus on one learner (as I had to), you will be expected to meet up with the student and collect data about their background and needs. However, before you do that, you may have the option to choose your victim… sorry, I mean learner.

Assuming you have the choice, you want to pick wisely. I would advise picking a student who:

speaks a major international language (e.g. Arabic, Spanish, Korean, etc.), and
you have already noted has specific problems.

The reason for picking a student who speaks a major international language is that the problems these speakers have in English are well-documented. I am however assuming that your students are not a monolingual group. It is not necessary you know their first language, and actually if it is obvious you have picked a learner because you know their language, the CELTA tutors may take a dim view of this.

Once you have chosen your learner, don’t delay to set up an interview with them. You will then want to plan out what you will ask them about (look at the background and needs sections for ideas). Make sure you record the interview so you can listen back to it later. Most mobile phones can deal with this, but you should make sure that it is recording. It is better to have two minutes on the recording of you saying “is it working?” than finding out afterwards it didn’t record.

You should also aim to get a writing sample from the student at the interview. You could ask them to do it ahead of the interview by asking them to write a letter telling you about their experience of learning English and what they would like to do with English in the future.

As the practice students attend CELTA lessons for free, they are usually very amenable to being interviewed. However, if they are not so thrilled at this prospect, you can generally sway them by telling them they will get feedback. If you promise this, do make sure you give it though. These students often come back again and again and so another CELTA trainee will probably use them in their assignment in the future. Don’t make their life more difficult because you promised the student feedback but didn’t give any.

As well as interviewing the learner, you can also make notes when you are observing the group and when you are teaching. Note anything you hear them say wrongly (you can always analyse what the mistake is later) and difficulties they have with skills.

Focus on a pair of learners

As with focusing on one learner, if you have a choice, try to choose students with major international first languages. You still want to set up your interview as soon as possible and prepare your list of questions.

Having a pair of learners gives you an opportunity that you don’t get with just one and it is a rookie error if you don’t take it. Since you have two learners, give them a task to complete together in the interview. This gives you a much more accurate picture of what they struggle with.

In lessons, you still need to note the errors you hear them make and issues that they have with skills. Remember, you are also comparing the students, so you should consider whether these issues are common to both.

Focus on a group

If you are told to focus on a group, you probably won’t get to interview the whole group. Certainly, if you do get any time when you can do this it won’t be long. Instead you might be told to conduct a survey on the group to get this information. This is something that your teaching practice group will need to do together.

Background and Needs

The first section of your assignment deals with the learners’ background and needs. This can include (this is not an exhaustive list by any means):

country of origin,
occupation,
first language,
other languages and level,
how long they have been learning English and how,
level of education,
experience of education,
why they are learning English,
what they use English for,
what they would like to use English for,
what they find easy,
what they find difficult,
what activities they like,
what activities they don’t like,
their attitude to correction.

It is fairly easy to phrase questions to get answers to these questions in an interview or on a survey. However, remember that if the student is low level you may need to word questions in a way that they can respond easily. With higher level students, you may want to ask these questions in a more open ended way to get them to talk more. You may want to script your questions to save time rephrasing them in an interview.

Once you have this information, you can begin writing it up.

The book Learner English (Smith & Swan) is invaluable here. This book looks at the problems that speakers of certain languages have when learning English. Reading the section that relates to your student(s) therefore will give you plenty of issues to write about.

Your centre will tell you how many issues you need to write about. It may specify that you need to write about issues related to each of the three knowledge areas (grammar, lexis and pronunciation) and the four skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing). Alternatively, it might tell you to pick two key problems that the student should work on. Obviously, the more areas you are required to provide problems for, the less you are required to write for each problem.

If you are only required to choose a couple of problems you will need to:

pick problems from different knowledge areas or skills (i.e. don’t have two grammar problems);
explain why you believe this problem is particularly important. This is easy if you can link it to something in their needs – for example, you could justify working on spelling if they have stated that professional writing is high on their priorities.

This can be the trickiest part of the assignment. You know a couple of problems that they have and now you must suggest solutions that will help them to overcome these.

To pass this part, you should ensure your solutions are sufficiently clear, relate to the problem and state why they will help. For example:

Problem: Student confuses /p/ and /b/ phonemes in speech and writing e.g. I bark my car. This is a common problem for Arabic speakers, as the two sounds are allophonic in Arabic.

Solution: A list of minimum pairs containing /b/ and /p/ is included in the appendix, e.g. beach and peach. I would use these to test if the student can actually hear the difference between these sounds. Through regular testing, the student should get better at hearing the difference. When the student can do this, I would use these words to drill the student in producing these sounds.

Assessment Criteria

To pass this assignment, you need to do the following:

show you are aware how a student’s background, learning experience and preferences affect learning.
identify the student’s needs.
correctly use terminology.
select appropriate material and resources.
provide a rationale for using these activities.
find, select and reference information.

If you want to pass this first time around, follow these tips:

As soon as you meet the students, note all the errors they make or problems they have that you can.
Share your notes with your teaching practice group and they will likely do the same.
Choose a student quickly if you need to.
As soon as you can set up an interview with the student.
Record the interview (make sure your device is recording).
Write up the background as soon as possible after your interview.
Use Learner English to identify problems. If you’re really struggling, you may well get away with saying that your student has a problem that is common to speakers of that language. This should be a last resort however.
Make sure you have sufficiently different problems i.e. not two grammar problems, or two pronunciation problems.
Talk to your colleagues when devising solutions. They may be able to suggest some good resources.
Include the activities in an appendix with a clear note of where you got them.
You aren’t supposed to explain how the activity is performed, but you can include the teachers’ instructions from the book in the appendix.
Keep a close eye on the word count.
If you can, have a relative or friend read your final submission through.

If you follow the advice above, you should be able to complete this assignment without too much fuss.

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The Ultimate Guide to CELTA

Written Assignments

Written Assignments: What they are and how to pass them!

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Related Tasks (LRT)

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Skills Related Tasks (LSRT)

CELTA Written Assignments – Focus on the Learner (FL)

CELTA Written Assignments – Lessons from the Classroom (LC)

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Find out how to save time on your CELTA assignments!

CELTA Assignment 2: Language Related Tasks – Clear Guide

Introduction.

This post intends to give an overview of CELTA assignment 2 and what is expected. It uses a generic example to work through answers so please be aware that not all centres would give exactly the same question but there should be many similarities.

Included in this post are the following points with comments and explanations:

Learning objectives for this CELTA assignment
Assignment guidelines and rubric from Cambridge
Main points to note
One for a point of grammar
followed by one for an item of lexis

After reading this article, you should have a clear idea of how best to answer the points in this assignment.

Please refer to your centre or tutors in case of any doubts about the points made in this article if they are different to what you have been told on your course.

As a rule, always go with what they say as they are the ones who are going to mark your work!

One a further point to note is that links in this article are affiliate links. This means no difference in price to you but clicking through these links means a small commission for CELTA Helper to keep the site running. If you do not wish to use these links, you can easily find the books online.

This assignment usually comes after the Focus on the Learner assignment .

The key to completing this ‘Language Related Tasks’ assignment successfully is by thinking about it as if you were preparing to teach the points that come up.

If you write with students in mind, you will stay focused on the task and should have clear and precise answers as a result.

What you have to do for CELTA Assignment 2: Main Idea

For CELTA Assignment 2, you will need to focus on language skills and awareness .

To complete this assignment, you will likely be given a short text with examples of language to ana lyse .

These examples are usually pre-selected for students

The texts shown in example versions of this assignment which are available online are often from pre-intermediate or elementary coursebooks.

These extracts focus on simple parts of grammar and vocabulary.

However, you will still need to explain these points clearly and succinctly to get a good score on this assignment!

You will usually have to analyse the following points:

two items of grammar
two items of lexis (which relates to vocabulary)

Instructions for the Language Related Tasks in CELTA Assignment 2

Below are some points to help you get familiar with the instructions/rubric for CELTA Assignment 2 , as appearing in the CELTA Syllabus document:

Word count for the ‘Language Related Tasks’ assignment

Length: 750–1,000 words

This might seem like a lot of words, but answering all of the points for all of the questions needs this amount of words!

My advice is to focus on answering each question thoroughly and systematically and not to worry about the words until the end.

Make sure you answer each part in enough detail and it will be fine.

However, if you often write too much, think of it as 4 different sections, with no more than 250 words per sectiswon.

Counting words per section should therefore help you to stay on task.

Learning Objectives for CELTA Assignment 2

The learning objectives from the Cambridge CELTA syllabus for CELTA assignment 2 are as follows:

Candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

a. analysing language correctly for teaching purposes b. correctly using terminology relating to form, meaning and phonology when analysing language c. accessing reference materials and referencing information they have learned about language to an appropriate source d. using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

With this in mind, you will therefore need to focus on correct identification and analysis of the language items you select.

You will also need to use terminology in the right way and from relevant books like:

Swan’s Practical English Usage
or Parrott’s Grammar for English Language Teachers

These books, among others, can also be used as references in your assignment, which you have to include, as stated above.

You can place references to these books at the end of the document, or perhaps at the end of a relevant section. Ask your tutors for their preferred way to do this.

For help with referencing, see the relevant section in a previous post to help you save time on your CELTA assignments .

The last thing to think about is using clear, concise language.

You can write in short sentences for this assignment, which are often clearest for the reader.

Now that you have an idea of what you need to produce, let’s look at how to answer the questions for the language related tasks assignment .

Answering Each Part of CELTA Assignment 2

You will likely have to explain the following aspects for the examples of language you are analysing:

Meaning Form Pronunciation Appropriacy (in parts) Anticipate problems learners might have Note all reference materials you have used

Let’s deal with each of these points using two examples, first for a point of grammar, and then for a point of lexis.

Example of a Grammar Point for Analysis

Let’s say one of your example sentences for grammar analysis is the following:

She’s just been to the shop

(I know, it’s a very short and simple sentence, but it should help to clarify things!)

The meaning answer needs to show a clear understanding of the key grammar point.

e.g. “In this example, “‘s just been” is used to show a recently completed past action.

One sentence should be fine here. Just make sure you summarise the main point of grammar and you will be fine!

Think of this as building blocks of language (which is the way I like to teach it when drawing it on the whiteboard!)

have/has + just + been + to + place She has (or ‘s) just been to the shop

You could write something like the following to answer this (but please also follow what your CELTA tutors tell you – they might have differing opinions on the styles and how to do this!):

This structure is called the present perfect (simple) tense.
The verb ‘have’ is always needed as an auxiliary verb for this tense.
‘has’ is the 3rd person singular form of the auxiliary verb for the subject ‘She’.
It is then followed by a past participle of the relevant verb, which is ‘been’ in the example sentence.
This is then followed by the preposition ‘to’ to describe the place visited.
The contracted form of the ‘has’ is ”s’, which is common in spoken English.
The word ‘just’ here shows that it is a recently completed action in the past.

It’s unlikely you would have enough words available to write all of the sentences above for one point, but it gives you an idea of how to do it.

And that’s all for the meaning section!

3. Pronunciation

There are 3 main parts to think about here:

Part 1: Phonemic transcription of the words to show ‘how’ they are spoken

Part 2: stressed words in the sentence.

Part 3: Connected speech

You do not have to write the pronunciation using phonemic transcriptions but you should get extra marks for using this correctly.

She’s been to the shop /ʃiːz ʤəst biːn tə ðə ʃɒp/

You might only need to transcribe the relevant parts of the present perfect tense – check with your tutor!

This may look difficult or confusing, but it actually only took me a few seconds. Here’s how I did it (start the video at 3m20s ):

You can also copy and paste individual words from the Cambridge online dictionary, if you like.

You could show the stressed words above the sentence as big circles and little cirlces (as I have done below), or as arrows/a line which shows upward and movement with the stress – hard to do on here but hopefully you get the idea!

O O o O

She’s just been to the shop /ʃiːz ʤəst biːn tə ðə ʃɒp/

Part 3: Connected Speech

This is simply when we connect words in a sentence when speaking and pronounce them slightly differently to when they are said on their own.

Looking again at our example sentence, we can see that the word ‘to’ is pronounced differently to saying it on its own, as follows:

You can see that ‘to’ in the sentence uses a schwa (/ə/) and is pronounced as /tə/.

By contrast, if saying ‘to’ on its own in an English lesson, or perhaps for emphasis, we would say it more like / tu :/.

Try to be aware of these small differences when planing a lesson as well!

4. Appropriacy (in parts)

For the appropriacy aspect of the assignment, you can think about two key points:

formal language
informal language

So if we look back at our example sentence She’s been to the shop, we can see it has a contraction (the apostrophe before the ‘s’) so we know it’s not appropriate for formal written language.

This is because all words should be written in full.

From there, you can add a sentence like the following:

This sentence is informal and would likely be used in spoken English only as it has a contracted form.

5. Anticipate problems learners might have

You only have to consider this where relevant – it should be clear when/where this is the case.

You should give a clear solution for each problem you identify. Concept checking questions (CCQs) are also very helpful here.

You can find examples of CCQs in Scrivener’s Teaching English Grammar book for each relevant grammar point.

All that is left for you to do is adapt the example CCQs in Scrivener’s book slightly and make them relevant for your assignment.

You can then also add this book to your reference list, showing that you’ve done reading and that you’ve got your ideas from a reliable source. Win win.

Let’s have a look at an example of each type of problem below:

She’s been to the shop

Meaning Problem: Students might not understand that this person has recently ‘been to the shop’. Solution : Ask two CCQs to elicit this from students. For example: 1. Question: Did she go to the shop today? Answer: Yes 2. Question: Is she at the shop now? Answer: No 3. Question: When did she come back from the shop? Answer: recently / just now / 5 mninutes ago / etc. (anything which converys recent past )

There are many ways you could approach this – it depends what you want the students to get from it (think lesson aims/objectives here) but you should be able to ask 1-2 clear CCQs to get the students to focus on what you want.

Problem: With the contraction, students might not realise that the apostrophe ‘s’ + been shows that this must be a present perfect sentence and is short for ‘has’ (this is because ‘She is been’ is not grammatically possible).

Solution: Ask students 2 x CCQs about this apostrophe + ‘s’ combination before revealing what the word is during the lesson. For example:

Question: (Point to the apostrophe ‘s’ on the board and ask) What is this word? (Not the letter – the word!)

Answer: ‘has’

2. Question: How do you know it is ‘has’?

Answer: because there is ‘been’ / a past participle after it / it is the present perfect tense / etc.

Pronunciation

Problem: Students might try to pronounce the contracted form of ‘has’ in the long form i.e. by saying ‘She has been’

Solution: Perform drilling with students when the sentence is on the board. Start with choral drilling, then choose paris/individuals, then back to choral drilling. Remind students that this should always be pronounced as it is written.

Appropriacy

Problem: Students might think that they can use this contracted form in writing.

Solution : Ask them for context about when they could use this. For instance:

Question: When can you use this ? (point to contraction). [hint – Yes or no: when you are speaking?]

Answer: Yes

2. Question: (continued from Q1 above) Yes or no: when you are writing (hint – in an exam/test)?

Answer: No

Then explain that all words should be written in full – for speaking it is fine to shorten them with contractions.

For problems with students who have specific native languages (or an ‘L1’), check out Swan and Smith’s Learner English book .

Note all reference materials you have used

Now, from the above, I have not used any reference materials directly. However, you will need to include references whenever you use them.

This is not as big of a problem as you might think.

For example, if you are using APA style referencing (which is quite common), you simply need to enter the author’s surname and year of publication after the point you have paraphrased from their work i.e. (Harmer, 2012).

At the end of the section, put a heading like ‘Reference list’ (APA style). You can see more on how to do it, check my article on time-saving for CELTA assignments here .

Summary of Grammar Point

And that’s it for the grammar item! From there, let’s move on to the example lexis item for analysis.

Example of a Lexis Item for Analysis

This time, we will use the following item of lexis for analysis:

“It is the best way to prevent more accidents in the future”

An example answer for ‘prevent’ would be something like the following:

“To do something that stops an action from happening in future”

This sounds a little awkward but as you can probably see, it is quite hard to describe ‘prevent’ succinctly without using the word itself!

This is a common problem in ELT so try to get used to explaining things like this succinctly and clearly.

Here you can write something like this:

“‘Prevent’ is the infinitive verb form.
It is used as the full infinitive in the sentence because it comes after ‘to’
It is a transitive verb therefore it requires an object, which is the ‘more accidents in the future’ in the example sentence

If you are not sure about transitive/intransitive verbs, all good (online) dictionaries should display this – I recommend Cambridge dictionary for the CELTA course for this reason.

See the ‘[T]’ in the screenshot below from the entry for the word ‘prevent’; this shows that it is a transitive verb.

You can also view the list of abbreviations used on the Cambridge dictionary website here (this is also quite useful as a general grammar reference – perhaps one for the reference list on this assignment, too)

Pronunciation:

Part 1: phonemic transcription.

Using Cambridge dictionary, we can copy and paste the phonetic transcription for the word into our assignment, as follows:

prevent /prɪˈvent/

Part 2: Word stress

To add to this, you can make points about the syllables and word stress. For instance:

There are 2 syallables in the word ‘prevent’
The second syllable is stressed.

That should be fine here!

NB – ‘Part 3’ for connected speech is likely not relevant here so has been skipped.

However, if you think it is relevant, in that the given word is likely to be pronounced in a connected way, then cover it in the same way as we did in the grammar point. If not skip it in your assignment, too.

As it states that this is only needed where relevant in the examples of this task online, you could probably skip this section.

The only point of note might be that it is acceptable as a formal/academic word.

Even so, that would only really be worth including if you are struggling to find other things to write about in the other sections of this lexis answer.

As such, let’s save our word count and move on to the next section.

Anticipated Problems and Solutions:

There will likely be fewer aspects to cover here than in the grammar section, but you will still need to be thorough.

Problem: Students may not realise this focuses on doing something before an event.

Solution: The following CCQ could help here:

CCQ: If you want to ‘prevent’ an accident, when do you take action? (Before)

(hint – you can say ‘Before something happens or after the accident?’)

It is unlikely that there will be an issue with the form here because this is an infinitive. You don’t have to answer every aspect so you could probably skip this section for this example.

NB – you will probably be given an adjective, noun or adverb as these will likely have more depth in terms of teaching than a regular verb.

If you are given a verb then it would likely be an irregular verb.

Because there wasn’t an obvious problem/solution for the form section above, you can make up for that by including 2 x pronunciation issues here.

Problem 1: Students might pronounce the first syllable as a long vowel sound as with words like ‘pre-sessional’ or ‘preach’ (this syllable would be transcribed phonetically as /pri:/).

Solution: When teaching the word, focus on the word stress and demonstrate this clearly both with hand gestures and by drawing syllable stress on board with word as below:

o O Prevent

You could also use the phonetic transcription here if you think the students will know it. If you are not sure, don’t use it.

Teaching students the correct stress should avoid (or ‘prevent’!) this problem.

Problem 2: Students might struggle to pronounce the ‘t’ (or /t/) at the end and simply leave it silent.

Solution: Take in a printed copy of the phonemic chart and point to each sound when working through it. Write the transcription on the board below the word and tap on /t/ if difficulty.

o O Prevent /prɪˈvent/

This /t/ sound could be practised through drilling on its own to confirm the importance of it.

The above should be enough for your problems and solutions.

Summary of Lexis Item

And that’s all for your lexis item for analysis, and for your analysis in general!

Once broken down, it’s not as difficult as it first seems.

Just be thorough and remember it will take longer than you think so don’t leave this until close to the deadline!

Examples of CELTA Assignment 2 Available Online

Here are some examples of CELTA assignment 2 available for free online.

Before you look at them please note that they do not often show the grade received and they vary in quality.

Some websites might also ask you to sign up or sign in, or even pay for downloading them.

This is up to you but all these links will show you at least a part of the assignment to give you a clearer idea of how it looks.

So here goes:

you will see that this blog post follows a very similar outline to the link above, but not all centres give the exact same assignment!)
From academia.edu: Assignment 2 (750-1000 words) LRT -Language Related Tasks (skip to page 2 for answers)
From scribd.com: CELTA Language Analysis Assignment
CELTA Assignment 2: Languag … on Scribd
From academia.edu: Assignment: Language Related Task (this example makes use of some nice timelines – which are a great visual way to explain points to students)
This is a template file with questions only.

You will see that these examples vary greatly but have similar types of questions to complete.

CELTA Assignment 2 Summary Points

To round up, here are a few key points:

Listen to your tutors – they will tell you how they like these assignment questions to be answered
The word count will easily be filled if you cover each point in depth
Remember that you can be far more creative than the ‘solutions’ suggested above in my worked examples.
Things like pictures, gestures, mimes, timelines and physical objects can all help to explain a point clearly and easily.

If you follow all of the above points, you should be fine when completing the ‘ language related tasks’ in this assignment!

One general piece of advice on the CELTA is to always keep your tutors happy.

Some of what they tell you to do may feel wrong at times at times but you will get through the course with less stress and resistance by following their advice. And you will likely get a better grade.

Useful Links for CELTA Assignment 2: Language Related Tasks

For an overview of the key points: CELTA Course Assignments
Writing style for the CELTA assignments: How to Write CELTA Assignments: Easy Guide
Quick tips to get through quicker: 10 Ways to Save Time On Your CELTA Assignments
CELTA Assignment 1 Guide: Focus on the Learner Assignment: Detailed Guide with Real Examples
More general tips to get your through your course: CELTA Course: Tech Tips and Tricks for Lessons and Assignments

Check out more CELTA Helper TV videos on YouTube here!

Best Books for CELTA Assignment 2

Some good books to help you here will be:

For clear grammar explanations and examples of concept checking questions (CCQs), Scrivener’s Teaching English Grammar
For clear grammar explanations, Swan’s Practical English Usage
For more good grammar explanations, Parrott’s Grammar for English Language Teachers
This will help to give context to the grammar point you are looking at

CELTA – language skills related tasks

On CELTA you are asked to complete four written assignments. Even though you get plenty of help from your tutors, time is pretty tight, and you need to do a lot of individual research. I’d like to show you my assignment 3 with hopes that it will give you some help and inspiration on your CELTA journey.

Written assignment 3 – language skills related tasks was definitely one of my favourites. In this task, you are asked to find authentic material – a video, a song, an article – the sky is the limit, and make a lesson plan around it. I knew exactly what type of article I wanted to work on.

You see, when I first started teaching I was given the opportunity to teach a B2 group of adults at a private company. They were all great and loved discussing difficult and at times controversial topics. Since the company was located in Extremadura, Spain – the region of jamón and in general meat-lovers, I decided to bring an article on vegan burgers. The class went wild, students were engaged and brought a lot of great points to the table. That’s why when our tutor presented us with CELTA written assignment 3, I knew what to do.

Firstly, we had to select two or three pieces of authentic material and present them to our tutors. I selected two different articles from reputable websites (go for good sources with no grammar or spelling errors!):

Charity shops will be full of ‘treasures’ and ‘gems’ following lockdown clearouts – a very topical and hot topic back in June 2020 by Independent . An article about people doing clothes clearouts while stuck at home and donating them to charity shops.
Burger King ‘plant-based’ Whopper ads banned – an article by BBC News about false and misleading advertising. Another interesting and topical piece of authentic material that can lead to discussions on veganism, misinterpretation of information, fine print and many more.

I presented both of my articles and pushed hard to get a green light on the second one as I’d already had a scaffold of the lesson plan in my head. Luckily, it got approved, and I started working on it immediately. I think that out of all of the tasks, this was the easiest one and the one that took me almost no time to prepare. Scroll down to the end of the post to see the effect of my work and download it for inspiration!

So with the task being chosen and justified, I got on with planning. Following everything I’d learnt by that point, I decided to start with a lead-in by topic prediction based on visuals. Draw or show a burger, vegetables and a TV with a cross/ban sign. Give some time to discuss what they think the article is about.

It, of course, leads nicely to the next activity – reading for gist. Since the article has about 300 words, your students can quickly skim through it to see if their predictions were correct. It is also a good opportunity for them to underline any new vocab, so you can discuss and explain any new words in the next part.

In this written assignment you are asked to prepare all the activities yourself! I decided to go with true, false, or information not given . I thought that putting this tiny twist on this exercise would make this activity a bit more challenging. I decided to go with eight sentences, so the task is long enough but not too long so students can stay focused.

To finish this part students discuss some general questions about the article topic. The main topic is who is in the wrong – Burger King for putting fine print or consumers for not reading it. I only prepared three questions, but in a classroom situation, I would be more than happy to put more emphasis on a discussion part.

Lastly, I wanted to put a creative spin. I asked students to change the controversial Whopper and make their own, brand new BK item with the list of ingredients, the name and last but not least, the slogan! For this, I went on the Burger King website and took a screenshot of the way they present their burgers. Students follow the example and prepare their very own burgers.

I had a chance to do this class in September 2020 with my B2 teenage group. It worked out well, and my students came up with the burger called The Cheesy Queen ! I don’t think I need to share the list of ingredients as the name speaks for itself.

Good luck with your CELTA ventures! If you feel like you need some help or just an inspirational guideline to follow, don’t be shy and take a look at my assignment.

If you have already done CELTA, don’t be shy and tell me the topic of your language skills related task!

Published by joannaesl

A CELTA certified ESL teacher based in Altea, Spain. I share my experience regarding teaching in Spain, getting into ESL from scratch, but I also like to prepare lesson plans and classroom content. View all posts by joannaesl