Pre-Interview Task

or Do you have to know English Grammar before you even apply for a CELTA or CertTESOL course?

If you download an application form for a Cambridge CELTA or Trinity CertTESOL course, you’ll find that, after the personal details section, there will be, more often than not, a big Pre-Interview Task which contains any number of grammar and language awareness tasks for you to do.

There is a danger that seeing all this for the first time will be enough to cause you to discard the application form, and possibly even the whole idea of teaching English. If you’re at that point, then don't worry, and read on!

There is no doubt that you will need to know all the answers to the questions on the form at some point. Sometimes we hear people say that “they thought they were going on the course to learn all of this…” so they’re a bit indignant that they need to do it in advance.

The fact is that the courses are desperately intensive at the best of times, and anything you can do beforehand - in terms of gaining some awareness of how the English language breaks down, and how it can be explained – will be highly beneficial later on.

You’ll be surprised how much on the forms you can actually work out on your own. For some of the questions where, for example, you’ve got to match a word to the name of that type of word or phrase, then you won’t be surprised to find that many answers and explanations are available by typing the unknown term into a search engine.

The main rationale behind putting all those questions on the form is not to test how much you know, but how much you're prepared to go away and find out. You won't be cheating by asking friends in the know, searching the net or looking in a book. It's all part of the learning process.

A good book to buy, use and keep for later is English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy. We seem to recommend this time and again, but it’s a useful guide to how you should be looking at English language.

Online English Awareness Language Course

Do want to start learning English Grammar before you even apply for a CELTA or CertTESOL course?

If you want to take all the strain out of the considerable language aspect of the CELTA or CertTESOL course, then help is on the way, in the form of a new course developed by Cactus TEFL and TEFL expert John Hughes just for people like you.

It’s an online English language awareness course, which you can sign up to as part of your CELTA or CertTESOL application.

Read all about the course here ……

You can also phone the team to find out more on 0845 130 4775.

Thanks,

Cactus TEFL