# How difficult is the CELTA?



## goooey333 (Dec 13, 2013)

Hi,
I am thinking about taking a CELTA course. I would like feedback from people who studied linguistics before taking the course.
A little history about me:
I am from California and studied linguistics at a university there. I completed a BA and had completed most of my course work for an MA when I went through a divorce and got laid off from my job.
I went to Chile and taught at a university for two years in a program to train future English teachers. I taught courses mostly in phonology, general linguistics and applied linguistics as well as general English courses.
I have read in many different forums that the CELTA certification is an extremely arduous process but would like to ask others with a linguistics background, and especially those with both linguistics as well as teaching background, that have been certified if they believe it was very difficult.


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## ALKB (Jan 20, 2012)

goooey333 said:


> Hi,
> I am thinking about taking a CELTA course. I would like feedback from people who studied linguistics before taking the course.
> A little history about me:
> I am from California and studied linguistics at a university there. I completed a BA and had completed most of my course work for an MA when I went through a divorce and got laid off from my job.
> ...



I recently acquired a TEFL certification and was looking into CELTA.

A friend of mine, who has a BA in English from a UK university, told me that CELTA is more of the same, not exactly hard to do but very work-intensive.

If you do the one-month intensive you will be working every evening to prepare your lessons for your classroom experience. CELTA teaches different techniques for teaching English to certain target groups: children, teenagers, senior citizens, business people, hospitality industry, etc., etc. and making the whole thing fun.

It involves a lot of teaching your peers and then getting feedback from the class and the trainer.

If you are used to teaching adults who are already proficient in the language, you might find some of the things you will learn a bit silly. I also found it surprisingly hard to prepare a grammar lesson for absolute beginners.


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## goooey333 (Dec 13, 2013)

ALKB said:


> I recently acquired a TEFL certification and was looking into CELTA.
> 
> A friend of mine, who has a BA in English from a UK university, told me that CELTA is more of the same, not exactly hard to do but very work-intensive.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the information. That is what I was wondering about, how much work outside the classroom is expected or needed.
I really just want the certificate to show to potential students if they ask about my credentials as I feel very comfortable tutoring as well as teaching classes.
I do think I could benefit from some of the lesson preparation training but I don't think I need much help with English grammar or even language teaching theory.


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