Benefits

CELTA or CTS?

What are the benefits of taking a CTS course?

Through the CTS courses, educational personnel, including teachers, school administrators, and educational supervisors, will be fully aware of and gain further experience in utilizing the most up-to-date approaches to teaching.
All Global-CPD courses provide you with tools and techniques supporting both the language skills and the subject knowledge. The CTS courses especially intend to improve you on the following components:

  • You will be able to deliver effective lessons based on the needs and characteristics of their learners. Your lessons will have better aims and the language will be contextualized.
  • You will discover new ways to choose useful activities, set them up, give clear instructions, monitor effectively and give useful feedback. You will be trained to start and finish the lesson on time rather than letting the bell finish the lesson for you. These points will help you a great deal with classroom management.
  • You will be encouraged to give more challenging activities and to develop learner autonomy as appropriate.
  • English teachers will learn and practice the skills to teach grammar and vocabulary in English, without using the students’ mother tongue.
  • You will receive practical pronunciation activities that you can use with your students.
  • You will better understand how to plan practical skills lessons.
  • You will learn how to reflect on student learning and on the effectiveness of their choices.
  • You will work with your own text books so that you will discover more practical ways to use them in class.
  • You will find out how students should progress from module to module (in a university context).
  • You will get many sessions on Teacher Language; e.g. questions, transitions, eliciting, presenting language, feedback, etc.
  • Teachers’ fossilized language errors will be identified and corrected, by the adoption of an integrated, concurrent approach to design, development, and production control.
  • You will get many resources for your future professional development for the future.

Every teacher is an individual learner so every teacher picks up on different parts of the course according to their needs and awareness level. Professional development must continue afterwards to get the full benefit of the course. In the report issued following a CTS course, institutions are advised about follow-up work that can be done to continue their teachers’ professional development.

 

Successful completion of CTS

A certificate of attendance is awarded at the end of the first two weeks and a certificate of achievement is given at the end of the second two-week course, assuming the participant meets the criteria. For the CTS-Academic, participants earn a separate certificate for each module.

To be awarded a certificate, participants must:

  • Attend 100% of sessions.
  • Maintain a portfolio of all their lesson plans, handouts, session notes and other work. This should be neat and tidy. Portfolios are checked twice across two weeks and signed by the trainer.
  • Contribute in a positive way during sessions and work towards a good group dynamic both within the larger class group and their smaller micro-teaching group.
  • Put all their effort into practice teaching and writing lesson plans according to the input given.
  • Make progress across the two weeks.

We expect participants to show a willingness to change attitudes and behaviours that prevent their students from getting maximum benefit from English language classes. Trainers may withhold certificates of participants who do not meet the requirements. They may also award a certificate with a note on the back indicating areas to work on in the future.

 

Arranging a CTS course at your institution

Institutions that want to arrange a CTS course should write to admin@global-cpd.org and ask for details.
We ask that any meetings or extra duties during the period of the CTS input days be eliminated. We cannot guarantee to finish everything if teachers are taken out for meetings.
Especially if coordinators are asked to attend, they should not be answering the phone or dealing with parents, etc during course hours.
The sessions continue until 17.00 on the last day.

 

Selecting participants

Just like CELTA, in order that candidates have optimal conditions for success, we do not want any nursing mothers, heavily pregnant ladies, participants with family issues which may result in missed sessions or candidates with outside commitments, such as MA work.
CTS courses are a full-time commitment, like CELTA.
If trainers see candidates who are unsuitable, they will inform the Globl-CPD Educational Coordinator who will inform school administration. Candidates can be withdrawn from the course at any time by the decision of the Training Coordinator.
For microteaching to be successful, each teacher needs quality time with the trainer. For this reason we accept a maximum of twelve participants per trainer on a two-week course.

 

Daily schedule

We recommend a daily schedule as follows:

9.00-10.30 SESSION 1
10.30-11.00 TEA BREAK
11.00-12.30 SESSION 2
12.30-14.00 LUNCH
14.00-15.30 SESSION 3
15.30-16.30 SUPERVISED STUDY

 

Trainers will negotiate any changes in the timetable with their group, bearing in mind the number of 90-minute input sessions that need to be given.

Participants should expect to prepare lessons, read articles and study their notes every evening. They will certainly have homework at the weekend between weeks one and two. CTS-Academic participants will have several pieces of project work to submit after each module of input sessions.

Trainers work with the participants for sessions 1-3 and in the last session we prefer teachers to stay at school and work on their lessons. Teachers are expected to plan in groups, like on a CELTA and need time together. We realize, however, that in some cases the service bus schedules will not allow this, however, in such cases we might not be able to run the full program of micro-teaching. We ask that schools bear this in mind while making arrangements.

Teachers need to come prepared for class, i.e. they need a proper A4 binder and A4 paper, etc. for their portfolios. We will ask all schools to inform their participating teachers to come with an A4 binder and A4 paper for note-taking on Day 1. Trainers check and sign portfolios.

Teachers also need to be prepared mentally; i.e. they should bring an open mind, a willingness to try something new and be ready to questions their own professional practice.

The course continues until 17.00 on the last day. Participants should not make plans to leave early.