There is a basic relationship of trust that needs to be in place for a student to learn from a teacher, and for a teacher to teach a student. The student must trust that the teacher offers useful suggestions in good faith, and this trust is expressed in the student making an effort to do […]
Category: Training Philosophy
posts exploring why we choose to work the way we do.
So you want to be a Celta Tutor? Part 4: Set…
This is a series of posts on the ins and outs of becoming a Celta trainer. You can find the previous posts here: part one, part two, part three. Pre-course? The purpose of the pre-course training phase is to familiarise you with the bulk of administrative and regulatory documentation produced by Cambridge Assessment and your […]
So you want to be a Celta trainer? Part 3: Ready…?
This is part three of a series of posts on the ins and outs of training to be a Celta trainer. You can find part one and part two by clicking on those blue links you have just read past. Go ahead and catch up; we’ll wait for you. The training plan? So, you have […]
So you want to be a Celta trainer? Part 2: getting your feet in the starting blocks…
This is part two in a series of posts describing and giving advice on the process of training to become a Celta trainer. You can catch up with Part 1 here. The training process? How you are trained will be the same whichever centre you train at. There will be a difference in how this […]
So you want to be a Celta trainer? Part 1: getting to the starting line
Who says so? You do. You have been asking for help and advice on social media about the ins and outs of getting trained up as a Celta trainer. This gave me the impetus to collect what I know and what I think about this area in a series of blog posts. This is for […]
Shaving and Innovation in Education
Note to the reader: this post originally appeared on the IATEFL Teacher Development SIG website. As a year has gone by and I like having stuff in one place, I’m republishing it here. — I recently started shaving with a straight razor. No, this isn’t going to be a post about how manly I am. […]
Celta hamburg podcast episode 3 – practice made pointless
I took a few minutes to record some thoughts about the past week on my current Celta course for my trainees, focusing on the question of what makes good controlled practice. I focus mainly on the problem of making controlled practice more than a mechanical exercise, and how to make it easier to check whether […]
Celta Hamburg Podcast Episode 2
I just made a short podcast for my current Celta trainees up here in Hamburg, where I talk a bit about our general approach to training, teacher talk, language grading, task-setting, work management (less generally interesting unless you are on the course) and tips for passing the Focus on the Learner assignment (these tips may […]
Mr. Gaughan goes to (IH) London
Back in September, I was honoured to be invited by Varinder Unlu to give a short talk for her colleagues at International House London about unplugging teacher training. IH London record these sessions and so – thanks to their efforts and the magic of the internet – I can share this with you all! Huge […]
who are grades for?
Grades have become so closely associated with education these days that is is quite easy to forget that they are – historically speaking – a relatively recent phenomenon. They were unheard of in the days of Socrates, and would have seemed alien to Comenius. Unbelievable as it may sound, we didn’t always bother with grades while […]