CELTA

Pre-Course Task

Paula Pepe

October 2018
Task 1
1. I will be doing the CELTA Course within an open,
multilingual, mixed gender and similar hability group. It is
a full-time Course in which one-to-one and group lessons
will be given to a small group during daytime.
2. I would like to teach at an institute in Buenos Aires
(maybe in other countries too), where groups are
generally open, monolingual and mixed gender, and
students have some previous experience.

Task 2
1. The main reason I prefer to teach adults rather than
children is because I have more experience with them. I
usually establish a better rapport as I can express myself
more directly and clearly.
2. As and adult, and a student, I would understand the
issues that adult learners would have to face with and I
would be able to empathize with them and share points
of view.
3. Adults are generally more focused on their careers and
their studies, they are willing to learn for a specific reason
for which they tend to be attentive and disciplined. They
also have previous experience in learning other subjects
and skill develompent.

Task 3
1. If I had to teach a group of learners I would like to
know what their expectations are, the reasons why they
are willing to learn English and whether they had a good
or a bad previous learning experience and why. I would
also want to know their particular abilities and difficulties,
their background and what kind of activities they are used
to.
2. I would find out by asking them to write about those
aspects as part of a class assignment and to read it aloud
afterwards. This would also help them to share their
opinions with the rest of the class and allow me to see
how they interact with each other as well.

Task 4
The most challenging students would be those who lack
of self-motivation and are under pressure of their families
or job requirements. These may not enjoy learning
english because they would not have a personal goal to
archieve.
Task 5
I think learners often valorate teachers who:
- build rapport
- know how to listen well to students
- are always learning and developing
- are enthusiastic and inspire enthusiasm

Task 6
Associations with the Word ‘grammar’:

- rules
- meticulousness
- Saussure
- syntax
- morphology
- language
- sentences
- linguistics

Task 7
1. Correct
2. ‘I’ve been to the movies last night’ -Incorrect
Correct version: ‘I went to the movies last night’
3. ‘He often come late’ -Incorrect
Correct version: ‘He often comes late’
4. Correct
5. Can I have a coffee black, please? –Incorrect
Correct version: ‘Can I have a black coffee, please?’
6. Correct
Task 8
Teachers should know about grammar because it is one
of the basis of language. Knowing grammar rules enables
them to understand how and why certain language forms
are used and helps them to teach more effectively.
Besides, students rely on teachers who know their subject
in depth and can clear every doubt they may have.

Task 9
1. ‘You’- subjective pronoun
2. ‘A’- article/determiner
3. ‘But’- coordinating conjunction
4. ‘Quite’- adverb of degree
5. ‘Abstract’- adjetive
6. ‘Could’- modal verb
7. ‘Those’- determiner
8. ‘For’-preposition
9. ‘Mean’-verb
10. ‘Plunger’- noun

Task 10
1. ‘Watches’- lexical
2. ‘Looking’- lexical
3. ‘Aren’t’- auxiliary
4. ‘Does’- auxiliary
5. ‘Haven’t’- auxiliary
6. ‘Waiting’- lexical

Task 11
1. Lexical
2. Auxiliary
3. Auxiliary
4. Lexical
5. Lexical
6. Lexical
7. Auxiliary
8. Lexical
Task 12
1-C
2-E
3-B
4-A
5-D
Task 13
1. Past tense form
2. –ing form
3. 3rd person- present simple tense
4. Base form
5. Past participle form

Task 14
Hear/heard/heard- Irregular
Do/did/done- Irregular
Help/helped/helped- Regular
Think/thought/thought- Irregular
Take/took/taken- Irregular
Steal/stole/stolen- Irregular
Go/went/gone- Irregular
Drink/drank/drunk- Irregular
Drive/drove/driven- Irregular

Task 15
1. Past progressive
2. Modal present perfect
3. Present perfect
4. Past progressive passive
5. Past simple
6. Modal progressive

Task 16
1. Present continuous
2. Past simple
3. Present simple
4. Past perfect
5. Present passive
6. Future perfect
7. Past progressive
8. Present perfect continuoun

Task 17
1. Past progressive
2. Future
3. Present perfect progressive
4. Present
5. Past and present

Task 18
1. The auxiliary verb that is used to create the present
progressive is verb ‘to be’ (am, is, are)
2. We add ‘ing’ form to the lexical verb.

Task 19
*I’m meeting- They are meeting at some established
point in the future
*He’s always running late- He has the habit of being in a
rush because he is always out of time, and it is something
that has happened in the past and continues up the
present.
* I’m walking- It is a past action but is being related as if it
were happening in the present as part of a literary
resource.

Task 20
Those verbs are all non-progressive, as they refer to
states rather than actions. ‘Like’, for example, makes
reference to a mental-emotional state.
In the sentence ‘He has a brother and a sister’ the verb
‘has’ has a state meaning, he possesses and will continue
to possess a brother and a sister, the verb doesn’t have a
dynamic meaning.

Task 21
* Pronounciation- The phonetic scripts that shows how to
pronounce a Word
* Part-of-specch- Tells what class of word it is by ussing
conventional abbreviations such as ‘n’ for noun and ‘v’ for
verb.
* Spelling
* Sense- A word may be used in more than one sense, so
it specifies the different meanings and to which word
class they belong to.
*Collocations, phrasal use and the syntactic operation of
a Word.

Task 22
1. ‘He is the Highest person’- We use the adjetive ‘high’
to describe inanimate objects which are wide or whose
top is out of reache: A mountain, a wall, a bridge.
To talk about people or narrow things we use the adjetive
‘tall’. So the correct form would be ‘tallest person’.
2. ‘I’m feeling a little enervated’- This adjetive is used in
formal writing and, very often, in a figurative sense. The
correct form would be ‘I’m feeling a little tired’
3. ‘The ideas in it are original and pretentious’- The Word
‘pretentious’ has a negative connotation as it suggests
that the person is trying to sound more clever than
he/she is. A correct version would be ‘The ideas in it are
original and ingenious’.
4. ‘Her grandfather gave her a loving slap in her face’- The
word ‘slap’ makes reference to a rough hit. ‘Slap in the
face’ can also be used in a figurative sense to express that
an action insults of upsets someone. This case is the
opposite, so a correct version would be ‘…loving caress’.
5. ‘Every day I ike to go footing after work’. The Word
‘footing’ makes reference to the act of standing on a
surface and how a person is standing. When we are
talking about a form of exercise, it is better to use the
Word ‘jogging’.

Task 23
1. ‘Not only he was nice, but he was also strikingly
handsome’ /Adverb- adjetive
2. ‘Afer he got up, he made his bed and did some
housework’/ Verb-noun
3. ‘It was absolutly fabulous!’/adverb-adjetive
4. ‘They both really depend on each other’/adverb-verb +
verb-preposition
5. ‘Their farewell at the airport was highly emotional’/
adverb-Adjetive
6. ‘She was caught in a vicious circle’/ adjetive-noun

Task 24
1-B 2-C 3-A

Task 25
1-B 2-C 3-A

Task 26
1. Their 2. South 3. Language
4. Peaceful 5. Young 6. Call
7. Search 8. Equation 9. Sugar

Task 27
1. Guarantee 2. Cavarly 3. Mechanisation
4. Language 5. Retreat 6. Speculative
7. Success 8. Balance 9. Identity
10. Articulate

Task 28
1. -Photograph
-photography
-photographer
-photographic

2. To record/ a record
-to increase/ an increase
-to present/ a present
-to import/ an import
When considered as verbs, these words are stressed on
the second syllable, while they are stressed on the first
syllable when considered as nouns.

Task 29
mother forget announce tonight notable mention
patrol indicative
Task 30
When it comes to an academic text (such as a scientific or
a literary one) I give it an intensive Reading, because
there may be several ideas to analyze which require
complex mental operations. When a read a Task
statement, first I try to determine the objective and to
search for the particular information I should take into
account.
Task 31
1. When we read an academic article we give it an
intensive/detailed reading and then we try to infer what
the writer’s implicit message is so that we can relate it to
the essay that we have to write.
2. If we were reading through a telephone directory it
would mean we are looking for particular information, so
we would do a scan reading.
3. If we were reading the editorial of a newspaper we
were keen on, we would try to get the main point of it
and try to infer what was the autor trying to
communicate.
4. If we were reading an advertisement for a job we
would read it intensively and then we would decide
whether to take it or not based upon our conclussions.

Task 32
The problem with this way of reading is that it takes a lot
of time to read a simple statement and getting lost
everytime we stop to look up for a word is very probable.
Task 33
The reasons why people find listening more challenging
than writing are that:
-sounds are performed only during a lapse of time that is
non-modifiable, for which they have to be understood
instantaneously as they are being effectuated, while
written material can be read several times.
- Though most learners find it difficult to pronounce and
recognize spoken words, they know how to write them.
-The most effective way to recognize the sounds is to be
able to reproduce them, and that takes a lot of practice.

Task 34
This morning I overheard a coversation between my
mother and the locksmith, in which he was giving her
instructions on how to avoid breaking the key when
entering the house. I scanned the conversation looking
for the particular information I was interested in.
Later I heard a song on the radio which got me curious so
I listened to it from start to end so that I could infer its
meaning.
Finally, I heard a message a friend had left on my phone;
she was telling me about a problem she had had. I
listened to the message very carefully in order to provide
her some help.

Task 35
1. Intense listening and listening to infer meaning.
2. Skim reading.
3. Intense and scan listening.
4. Intense, scan and skim listening.
5. Listening to infer
6. Skim listening

Task 36
I think that students learn to write first because
pronounciation is a lot more difficult and requires years
of meticulous training. Besides, having someone to
converse in inglish is not as usual as finding written
material to read on their own.

Task 37
1. Though he doesn’t appear to have a solid knowledge
concerning vocabulary, the student managed to
communicate successfully.
2. The sentence is gramatically incorrect but the message
could be understood by the listener, so he succeded.
3. This sentence is also grammatically wrong but it could
be understood as well.
4. Not successful at all. ‘I stay here 5 weeks’ creates
confusion because it is not clear if the speaker had been
there for 5 weeks or if he/she has 5 weeks ahead.

1. Transactional 2. Interactional 3. Interactional

4. Interactional 5. Transactional 6.Interactional

Task 39
Learners could improve their language development by
speaking fluently because they would gain experience in
listening and pronounciation while exercising their
espontaneity and creativity.

Task 40
1. S/ 2. W/ 3. S/ 4. S/ 5. W/ 6. S/ 7. S/ 8. W/ 9. W/ 10. W/
11. S/ 12. S

Task 41
1. ‘Threw’ and ‘through’ are pronounced the same way.
2. ‘My brother lives’. The learner may be used to miss
some vowels to shorten words when writing informally.
3. The comma after ‘however’ is used when introducing a
converse idea. In this case there should not be any. The
learner may not be aware of that particular rule.
4. The learner did not write any commas. Maybe the
punctuation rules of his/her native language are different.

Task 42
The learners have difficulties with ellipsis (to avoid the
repetition of words that are overused, such as ‘and’ and
‘I’), sentence division, punctuation (missing commas and
full stops), spelling and capital letters.

Task 43
A-3 B-6 C-1 D-5 E-2 F-7

Task 44
1. F / 2. G / 3. B / 4. E / 5. I / 6. H / 7. D/ 8. A

Task 45
1. Students may find certain phrasal verbs hard to
remeber. An easier way to express the same idea would
be ‘Write down’
2. The sentence is unnecesarilly long and messy. It would
be better to go straight to the point by saying ‘Look at
question number 4 and answer it’
3. The instructions were given all at once and students
got cofused because they didn’t have the ability to
memorize them. It would be more helpful if the teacher
simplified the instructions and wrote them separately on
a whiteboard.
4. It was not clear whether they had to write the answer
down or not. Giving specific instructions like ‘Look at the
question at the bottom of the page and answer it’ would
leave no doubt.

Task 46
1. I would explain him/her that team work helps to
develop certain skills such as group organization and the
discussion of different ideas that would’t be posible for a
student to practise on its own.
2. I would could explain this student that I couldn’t
possibly know the first language of every student, so I
would recommend him/her the use of dictionary.
3. I would have a conversation with this student about
respect.
4. I would explain him/her that using books (like
coursebooks, for example) is necessary for the learning of
english, since it it helps the students to develop their
reading and writing skills and allows further correction of
activities.

Task 47
First of all, I would ask the students to separate into two
groups. Each member of one of the groups would be
asked to design and make a simple brochure (required
materials would be provided) which would include all the
information about the courses. Members of the other
group could be asked to think of a particular course they
would like to do. Next, all the chairs and half of the desks
would be placed at the back of classroom; the other half
of the desks would be placed in a row. Assistants would
be standing at one side of the desk, ready to explain the
information contained in the brochure , and the clients
would be at the other side of the desk, ready to decide
which is the most suitable course for them. Brochures
may be circulating around the desks so that all the
assistants could explain different brochures if needed.
Some problems might come up: Assistants may want to
explain the same brochure at the same time, for which
one of them would have to choose another brochure;
clients could make their choise too quickly and finish the
role play before they were supposed to.

Task 48
1. I would show them an image of a thin person and
another of a slim one, trying to make explicit the negative
and possitive connotations of each.
2. I could show them the difference by gesturing.
3. I would explain them by doing a drawing of a person
riding a car and another of the same person riding a bike.
Each drawing has a particular date in order to explain the
following: It is 2006 and Layla goes to work by bike. She
has to wake up very early (since biking takes her a long
time). It is part of her daily routine, so she says ‘I’m used
to getting up early’. It is 2008, and Layla has purchased a
car, for which getting up early to ride her bike is no longer
part of her routine, so she says ‘I used to get up early’.
4. By showing a video in which actors play the roles of
nervous and upset people.
5. I could draw a time line in which 3 different actions
take place: First, the mechanic is fixing my car and forgets
to add the brake fluid to it. Next, I’m having a crush.
Finally, I’m at the hospital with a broken leg. In the
narrative, I would explain which action happened in the
past and which one happened even before: ‘I crashed my
car 4 weeks ago because the mechanic had forgotten to
add the brake fluid 4 weeks before.’
7. I would explain how to pronounce these words by
teaching phonetics
8. By explaining the difference in meaning
9. By writing both words on the board and stressing the
correct syllable and explaining the difference in meaning.
10. I could give two examples: A live t.v transmission that
is happening right now, and a picture of the house where
I live. I would also write their phonetic transcription for
them to learn how to pronounce them.

Task 49
1. Maybe the activity was unsuccessful because :
-While some of the students were reading aloud, the
others weren’t paying attention to the lecture but were
thinking about their turn to read.
-The lapse of time between the lecture of the students
made them loose the gist.
- They couldn’t read and process the text at the speed it
was being read.
-Learners didn’t know many of the words they read

A better option would be giving the students a list of the

vocabulary that appears in the text asking the learners to
read the text individually and to think of an answer for
several questions about it.
2. The point of the assignment got lost in the middle of a
discussion between two people while it should have been
a class discussion that envolved all the students, who
took those particular opinions as reference.
It would be more helpful if the students were asked to
discuss the ideas in pairs first.