celta assignment 3 reading skills

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CELTA Course Assignments: Step-by-step Guide with Real Examples

CELTA course assignments are a mystery for many people. Everyone who applies for a CELTA course has heard about them, but not many know what to expect.

In fact, I see many people online posting for help with them as they feel there is not enough time to do them properly and they are often confused by the instructions.

For this reason, I wanted to go through the basics of the CELTA course assignments and explain what you can expect. However, I should tell you early on: every CELTA course centre has slightly different assignments.

Yes, they follow the Cambridge CELTA standards but CELTA centres use their own specific requirements. This depends on what they feel is the best way for you to show what you have learnt on the CELTA course.

CELTA Course Assignments: What are they?

There are 4 CELTA course assignments, which are as follows:

• Assignment 1: Focus on the learner
• Assignment 2: Language related tasks
• Assignment 3: Language skills related task
• Assignment 4: Lessons from the classroom

As mentioned above, these are different for each CELTA centre so it is hard to go into too much detail here. Instead, I will give you a brief overview and some links to examples of these CELTA course assignments, available for free online (but don’t pay for any!).

A word of warning: online examples are not guaranteed to be of high quality.  They are simple tasks past CELTA trainees have uploaded to various websites.

You might also find that the assignment you are given is very different to any of the sample CELTA course assignments linked to below. With that in mind, it’s important to think about these assignments in terms of broad concepts, rather than specific points.

CELTA Course Assignment 1: Focus on the Learner

In general, this CELTA assignment asks you to comment on one student, or learner, from the group you are teaching.  The assignment is essentially a needs analysis for that student.

For this assignment, you have to focus on their background, and strengths and weaknesses in learning English. You should also give suggestions for them to improve. To get a good grade on this assignment, you will also need to refer to some CELTA books (in brief) about teaching English.

Much of your assignment will also be based on an interview you do with a particular student. Remember to organise the interview early on in your CELTA course! And no, it won’t be anything like the CELTA course pre-interview task !

The word count for this assignment could be something like the following:

• Learner Background: 300-350 words
• Analysis of the student’s language problems: 300-350 words
• Suggested activities for them improve their English: 300-350 words

What you write under each section will be based on your interview with them and what you have seen them do in class. Keep a close eye on them to help you here!

Hopefully you can now see clearly why this assignment is called ‘ focus on the learner’ !

• For a more detailed look, check this article I wrote dedicated specifically to the Focus on the Learner Assignment
• Or check out the CELTA Survival Guide Ebook by CELTA Helper

CELTA Course Assignment 2: Language Related Tasks

For the second assignment on your course, you will need to focus on language skills and awareness.

Many people get really worried about this assignment, but you don’t need to! This is where you need to remember that the CELTA course is for people with little or no experience.

For the above, your tutors will not expect you to have a very high level knowledge of English. Just remember to follow the assignment instructions and do your best!

If you take good notes during the ‘input sessions’ on your CELTA course, these will be particularly helpful here (make sure you are taking notes you can read and understand afterwards!)

Regarding specific tasks, you will be given examples of language to work with and you will need to cover specific aspects of these.

You will likely have to explain, with examples, the following for each piece of vocabulary you are given:

• Conveying meaning
• Checking understanding
• Pronunciation
• Form (or sometimes called ‘part of speech’)
•  Anticipated problems & solutions

Remember, it is for you to show what you have learnt up to this point. With this in mind, you should be able to find help or a guide in your notes from the input sessions you have already had.

You should also write your own example sentences – don’t be tempted to use the ones from the dictionary!

Another section of this assignment will be dedicated to grammar. 

Much of what you need to do in this section will be similar to the vocabulary section. You might need more background here, so I would suggest you do some reading before starting the course.

Reading relevant books will help you to save time later on and build your confidence throughout the course.

Some good books to help you here will be:

• Advanced Grammar in Use
• Practical English Usage
• Grammar for English Language Teachers
• (NB: all of the above are affiliate links).

For a much more in-depth look at this, be sure to check out my dedicated article for CELTA assignment 2 here   (with worked examples!)

CELTA Course Assignment 3: Language Skills Related Tasks

These tasks will be  based on an authentic piece of English language . You should have quite a bit of flexibility here to chose this, for example you could use many different types of sources such as articles, songs, videos, and so on.

With that authentic piece of language, you can then think about what you want the students to learn and make the tasks around this. You will need to explain why you have chosen this task, but this will be quite brief.

You need to do some reading for this task as it asks you to explain how to teach different skills in English.

Think about the skills as follows:

• Receptive skills : reading and listening
• Productive skills : writing and speaking

To apply what you have read, you will likely need to create possible exercises, or tasks, for each of these skills.

For every task you make for the skills above, you will need to give your reasoning, or rationale, for including this task in your lesson.

For example, you could possibly the students to read to get the general idea of the text (reading for gist), as your first reading task. Then, follow this with comprehension questions on the text they have read. It doesn’t have to all be about incredible tasks here, simple ones work well, too.

There are many different ways to approach this, but try to keep your aims and objectives clear in your mind at all times. If you do this, you will be fine!

CELTA Course Assignment 4: Lessons from the Classroom

As this assignment comes at the end of the course, it is mostly reflecting on what you have done.

You need to follow the instructions carefully (again!) to get a good grade. You will also need to think about things like your observations of the trainers, your peers and your own observed lessons.

This time, you will need to write about your own strengths and weaknesses. There will also be room for you to write about your development as a teacher.

Other points which might be included in assignment 4 are things like classroom management and lesson planning, among others!

It really does cover a wide range of topics, so look at what your CELTA centre wants you to do. Then all you have to do is follow what they ask for!

It might help to keep some sort of diary throughout the CELTA course to write assignment 4. It would certainly save you any time in thinking about what to write later on.

Imagine how you will feel at the end of the course; your brain might be ready to shut down!

Hence, diary notes could save you some mental energy here, with templates for this and much more included in the CELTA Student Notebook and Diary that I have made and put on Amazon – check it out now for more!

Remember to also check out my dedicated post on the Lessons from the Classroom Assignment here for an in-depth guide to everything you need!

Below is also a very detailed Slideshare presentation by Jo Gakonga of ELT Planning, an experienced EFL teacher and teacher trainer who has a fantastic website. It explains the main elements of the ‘lessons from the classroom’ assignment in detail.

Useful Links

Focus on the learner – assignment 1.

• One example of the ‘Focus on the Learner’ assignment can be found on Scribd.com here

CELTA Course Assignment 2: Language Related Task

• An example of the Language Related Task CELTA course assignment can be found here on scribd.com .

CELTA Course Assignment 3: Language Skills Related Task

• A downloadable example of the CELTA course assignment 3 is available on Academia.edu – note that you will need to sign in with a Google or Facebook account to download the example CELTA assignment, but it is a safe site.

CELTA Course Assignment 4: Lessons from the classroom

• There are many of these available online but this assignment is very personal. It’s all about  you  and your  learning.
• These assignments are helpful for an idea of what to expect, but not more than that.
• Again from Academia.edu, you can download a version of CELTA course assignment 4 by signing in for free . You can also click on the image below to view it.

CELTA Course Assignments: Any more questions?!

So, I think I have covered all the main points above.

If you need extra help with your CELTA course, check out the CELTA Course Student Notebook and Diary by CELTA Helper over on Amazon .

This handy notebook is designed with ready-made templates to make your CELTA course that much easier, giving you space to record all your key notes without you having think about how to organise or record your notes – just fill in the templates for things like observed lessons, planning, reflective diary (especially helpful for the final assignment) and more. I designed it to help CELTA course students get through the course – perhaps it can help you, too.

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Lesson Plans and Ideas

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!

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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

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Language Skills Related Tasks - help with CELTA Assignment 3

Language Skills Related Tasks is often set around the mid-point of a CELTA course . Like all CELTA written assignments, it is 750 to 1000 words long, and like all CELTA assignments, it's based on the course content and doesn't require a lot of background reading. However, unlike other CELTA assignments, it does explicitly require you to reference at least some background reading. This doesn't mean you need a library full of books. It does mean that you'll need a methodology book to consult, preferably one that has a chapter on receptive skills and one on productive skills. Any of the titles that your CELTA tutors recommended at the beginning of your course is fine. If you're wondering which book might suit you, here are some of our recommendations .

In the assignment, you'll be asked to design a skills lesson (or a set of skills tasks). These might be based on a text your tutors have given you or they might be based on a text you have chosen yourself. If your tutors ask you to select a text, you need to choose carefully. Think about how long the text is, how difficult it is and how culturally appropriate it is. You'll also need to think if it works for your students - is it something you can imagine they'd actually be interested in? You don't need to pick a very simple text, but it does need to be achievable for the students.

The key part of the assignment is task design. You'll be asked to design some receptive skills tasks. These should practise different sub-skills. Typically, these might include a gist task and a detailed comprehension task. You need to be very careful here. In my experience, it's most often in the design of receptive skills tasks that CELTA trainees trip up. Do the tasks yourself. Do students really need to understand the text in order to complete the tasks? Are the tasks doable by students at the level you're teaching? And do the tasks match the sub-skill you identified? It's important to make sure that a gist task actually does check if students have got the gist of a text. It's also important that a detailed comprehension task tests if students have got a detailed understanding of the text. You'll also be asked to design productive skills tasks.

As mentioned above, this is often the only assignment when you'll be asked to explicitly quote from your background reading. Make sure that you choose relevant quotations that show that you understand why students should practise whatever you're looking at in that section of the assignment, whether it's gist reading tasks or longer writing tasks.

Overall, this tends to be one of the more straightforward CELTA written assignments. So long as you can show an understanding of how receptive and productive skills lessons work, it's likely that you will have a good chance of success. It's not as "bitty" as the Focus on the Learner or Language assignments and so this can mean it doesn't take as long to write either - which is a relief!

About the author :

Dr Connor O'Donoghue  hails from Ireland and he started teaching English as a foreign language in Poland in 2003 and he became a CELTA trainer in 2008. He has taught and trained in Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. Connor also holds a Masters and a PhD in Education from Trinity College in Dublin. He has previously managed large teacher training centres in Vietnam and in London before founding DC Teacher Training.

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CELTA Assignment 3 Language Skills Related Tasks

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The Ultimate Guide to CELTA

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Skills Related Tasks (LSRT)

Looking for help with CELTA Written Assignments? You’ve come to the right place.

Written assignments form a major part of the CELTA assessment process and are a compulsory part of the course.  There are 4 written assignments in total but some centres conflate two of them to make one larger assignment.  In this series we will look at each individual assignment and provide you with some advice and guidance as well as highlight some of the common pitfalls.

Disclaimer: All centres create their own written assignment rubrics, make sure you check with your centre exactly what is required.  We can only provide general information here, rather than specific.  With this in mind, do you think it would be wise to pay for other peoples’ assignments to help you write your own?

Although every centre creates their own written assignments, the CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines states that for the LSRT assignment:

The design of the assignment is to include:  • evidence of the candidate’s background reading in the topic area • identification of the receptive language skills and/or subskills that could be practised and developed using coursebook material or authentic text • identification of productive language skills that could be practised and developed in relation to that text • task design in relation to the text with brief rationale

Candidates can demonstrate their learning by: a. correctly using terminology that relates to language skills and subskills b. relating task design to language skills development c. finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

All written assignments should be 750 – 1000 words

Source: CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines

What does this mean for you?  Well firstly, of course, you need to make sure you do some background reading and find out more about why we provide students with practice in the reading/listening subskills,  what  these subskills are and how you can give the students practice using them.  It would be very easy for me to tell you the answers in this post but that won’t help you in the long run.  Instead I can suggest a couple of sources for you to have a look at:

• Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener
• The CELTA Course by Cambridge University Press
• Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language by Macmillan Education
• Listening Skills  – Blog Post by TUGtoC
• Getting to Grips with Reading Skills  – Blog Post by TUGtoC

If your centre’s assignment requires you to find your own material (reading or listening texts) make sure that it is something you can use for the level of learner you are aiming the lesson at.  Whilst it is true that most material should be possible to use with all levels, the activities themselves must be aimed at the learners’ level.

Once you have found a text (if your centre hasn’t provided you with one) you will probably be asked to come up with suitable activities that will give the students practice in one or two of the reading/listening subskills.  You can make sure that your activity really does practise the subskill you are suggesting by trialling the task yourself (ie if you want the students to scan for specific information, try it yourself and see if it is actually possible to find the answers by scanning!).  Please also make it clear in your assignment that you will be giving the students the task to do while reading/listening – NEVER ask students to read or listen to something without giving them a task to do.  If you give students something to read/listen to without a task then they will not be practising the listening/reading subskills, instead they will be listening/reading very carefully because they won’t have anything specific to focus on.  I can’t tell you how frustrated we tutors get when trainees get this wrong 😦

After you have created your in-reading/in-listening part of the lesson you will be asked to suggest a follow-up activity that would have students practise either speaking or writing.  After receptive skills practice students need to start being productive and as reading and listening is an individual task I would suggest a follow-up task should have more student interaction, this could be in written or spoken form but is more likely to be in spoken form as writing tends to be done alone.  Whatever you decide to do, remember to exploit the context of the in-reading/listening tasks by, for example, remaining on the topic from the text. Remember, however, they should not be reading/listening to the text again for the post- activity.

One more thing you should make sure you do is write a bibliography, stating all the resources you have used to help you to write your assignment.  Remember, CELTA requires you to prove you are capable of “finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task” – (Source: CELTA Syllabus and Assessment Guidelines) so make sure you prove this by including your bibliography.

When you think you have completed your assignment, walk away from it for at least a couple of hours.  Go back to it later with a fresh pair of eyes and check it against the rubric.  Ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you done everything that you have been asked to do?
• How many words have your written?
• Is it clearly laid out and easy for someone else to read?
• Are there any spelling, punctuation, grammar errors?
• Are there any typos?
• Have I included a bibliography?

Common Pitfalls

In our centre, trainees often fall foul of the following:

• using the subskills terminology incorrectly (ie saying something is a scanning task when it is a skimming task)
• providing a task that doesn’t practise the subskill they say it does
• not highlighting the fact that the in-reading/listening task they would give students should be done while reading/listening
• not submitting a complete assignment
• writing much more than is required and going way over the word-count
• not proof-reading their work before handing it in
• not including a bibliography

Any one of the above can result in having to resubmit the assignment.  Whilst having to resubmit is no bad thing, it does increase your workload and stress levels so should be avoided if possible.

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A CELTA Tutor based in Munich and co-author of The Ultimate Guide to CELTA View all posts by Emma Jones

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Exam Seekers

Content related to english exams and courses., |celta-012| assignment 3: language skills-related task.

Hello Exam Seekers,

there’s been a while since I post something about the CELTA , so I decided that today I would give you some more hints about the assignments.

I’ve already given you tips on how to write your Assignment 1: Focus on the Learner and Assignment 2: Language Related Task . We are in April, May is almost there, so I believe that for those taking the part-time CELTA, assignment 3 will be required very soon. Therefore here are some tips for it.

youtube: watch?v=krZkDTxutdk

Well, differently from assignment 2 which focuses on an analysis of the language (grammar, pronunciation, and form), the Language Skills-Related is much simpler.

You are expected to write an assignment divided into four parts using 750–1,000 words. According to Cambridge, the design of the assignment includes :

• evidence of the candidate’s background reading in the topic area
• identification of the receptive language skills and/or subskills that could be  practiced and developed using coursebook material or authentic text
• identification of productive language skills that could be practiced and developed in relation to that text
• task design in relation to the text with a brief rationale

Candidates can demonstrate their learning by:

• correctly using terminology that relates to language skills and subskills
• relating task design to language skills development
• finding, selecting and referencing information from one or more sources using written language that is clear, accurate and appropriate to the task

I’m going to dive this assignment into steps so that you can follow it properly.

Choose one of the CELTA groups that you are teaching and provide a class profile  which includes names, age range, professional and educational backgrounds, linguistic strengths and development needs, interests and reasons for studying English.

Keep in mind that you don’t have many words to write a profile on all of your CELTA students, só try and choose around 6 students and write something like that:

This is a pre-intermediate heterogeneous group of volunteer students in the CELTA course at _____. We follow Total English Pre-Intermediate as a course book, and sometimes we use authentic and supplementary materials.

Regular attendees

Chose a type of material to provide them (a text or an audio/video) and justify why you have chosen this text for this particular class based on the class profile.

According to my class profile, most of my students are retired and they like to travel, so I chose a video about traveling tips and I rationalized my choice:

I’ve chosen a video called Travel Tips: Real Discounts on Airfare Found!!! ( appendix1 ) because I think it’ll be interesting for this group of students since most of them love traveling abroad: Angelina loves England and every year she goes there. This year she is taking Maria Ester with her. (…) As Harmer(1988:84) says, adults “often have a clear understanding of why they are learning and what they want to get out of it”. Therefore, I believe they would all profit on having some tips about discounts on airfares.

The video contains a large range of vocabulary on the topic, and grammar points (present tenses, giving instructions) which they’ll have the opportunity to recognize in an authentic context.

This was just a snippet of my assignment part 2 rational. As you could see, I provided the video source (you should attach it to the appendix) and I explained why I chose that video relating my choice to my students’ likings and to a reference.

After having chosen the text/video, you should d esign and submit a reading/listening for gist and for detail tasks for practicing these skills and provide answers to these tasks . Don’t forget that you have to provide reference all the way long. “According to….”, “this author believes that…”, by doing that, you show that you are making conscious choices and not random.

The length and content of this video make it ideal for students to practice listening for gist and detail, because the topic matches the students’ interests and the vocabulary and structures match the pre-required knowledge for pre-intermediate students.

It would be a good idea to have a skimming task of this video, for students to be more aware of the general idea, they’d be “trying to extract a mostly general understanding of what, superficially, the audio […] is all about”(HARMER,2005:271). In this case, understand that the video is about discounts on airfares .

Task 1 (Reading for Gist)

1) Watch the video and circle the best title for it:

• Travel Tips: Real Discounts on Airfare Found!
• Flight Tips: How to book your flight?
• Watch out: What makes a flight expensive?

  Answer key:  a.

As you can see in my example, I explained why it would be interesting for students to have a gist and detailed activity based on the video, and why that specific task. I provided the task and the answer key.

This was the gist task, the example of one of the exercises, remember that you have to provide at least two, okay?

Do you remember that a lesson plan should provide 4-5 tasks? Warm up/Lead in , Read/Listen for gist/detail, and follow up. Well, part 3 was focused on receptive skills, now part 4 is focused on productive skill. So at this part, you should say which productive skills could be practiced in relation to this text in a follow-up activity. Design and submit the follow-up tasks with the rationale.

As this group of students would benefit from further development of speaking skills and given their general interest in travels and tips for trips, for productive skills, I have devised some questions for the students. They have some questions related to the context (trips, tips, and pre-traveling suggestions) as exercise 3 on their exercise sheets, which they should discuss in pairs and exchange information. They would do this activity with more than one pair so that they would practice speaking and exchange personal information several times and later on expose to the class their peers’ answers as feedback and conclude the productive stage.

1) Discuss the questions below about trips and tips :

• Do you like traveling? How often do you travel?
• When you travel, do you use any search engine to book flights?
• Do you think it is cheaper to book a flight online or in person? Why?
• What was the price of the cheapest and the most expensive flight in your life?
• Do you think that Sonia Gil’s tips were good? Why?
• Do you think you might use her tips in the future?

Extra steps:

These extra steps are the basics: REFERENCE and APPENDIX.

At the end of your assignment include the reference to your background reading and include at least two methodology sources in your list of references. Make sure these references are cited in the body the assignment.

 Mine was like that:

Bibliography

• GIL, Sonia (2014). Travel Tips: Real Discounts on Airfare Found!!!. Available at: < https://www . youtube.com/watch?v=jgbrVzEMolA>. Access on: 24 Jan. 2015
• HARMER, Jeremy (2005). The practice of English Language Teaching. e. Pearson.
• HOGAN, Jonathan T., IGREJA, José Roberto (2004). Phrasal Verbs.
• SCRIVENER, Jim (2005). Learning Teaching. e. Macmillan.

And since you had an authentic material (a text/video/audio) from which you created your gist/detailed task, you should also provide it in your appendix. Since mine was a video, my appendix was like that:

By the way, this youtube channel ( Sonia Travels ), is fantastic for you to use as authentic material for classes based on trips and travels.

I hope that this text was really helpful for you to write your assignment. If you still have questions don’t forget to send us a message. Leave a comment in the comment section below or on our social media:

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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:

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