written assignment celta

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What's in the celta course.

The CELTA course covers the principles of effective teaching, and gives you a range of teaching techniques and practical experience. You get hands-on teaching practice and observation of experienced teachers, and you’ll apply your learning by delivering communicative teaching with English language learners.

Course format summary

The celta course in detail.

CELTA courses are delivered by authorised centres on behalf of Cambridge English. All CELTA courses include at least 120 hours of contact between candidates and course tutors, and include:

• tutorial support and consultation
• supervised lesson planning
• 6 hours’ assessed teaching practice per candidate supervised by a course tutor
• feedback on teaching practice
• peer observation of teaching practice (i.e. watching the other candidates’ lessons)
• 6 hours’ directed observation of lessons taught by experienced ELT professionals, up to 3 hours of which may be of filmed lessons

You should also allow for 80 additional learning hours for pre-course preparation, reading, research, assignment writing, lesson preparation and record keeping.

The maximum ratio of candidates to tutors is one tutor for every six candidates, and there are at least two tutors on each course.

Course topics

The CELTA course covers a range of topics:

• learners and teachers, and the teaching and learning context
• language analysis and awareness
• language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing
• planning and resources for different teaching contexts
• developing teaching skills and professionalism

Download a summary of the course topics

Download the CELTA syllabus

How you will be assessed

You will be assessed throughout the course and there is no final examination. The two types of assessment are:

Teaching practice

You will teach for a total of 6 hours, working with adult classes at a minimum of two levels of ability. Assessment is based on your overall performance.

Written assignments

You will complete four written assignments (each 750–1,000 words). These focus on:

• analysing and responding to adult learner needs
• analysing language for teaching purposes
• teaching language skills
• reflecting on classroom teaching

Your teaching practice and written assignments are assessed by your trainers during the course. Your trainers will discuss your progress with you, including in at least two one-to-one tutorials, so you should have a good idea of your strengths and areas to focus on.

There are four possible grades for CELTA:

At the end of your course you will be given a candidate report form, which will give your provisional grade. This will also say whether you took the course face-to-face, online or as a mix of face-to-face and online.

Cambridge English will issue your certificate when grades have been confirmed. Certificates are usually despatched up to eight weeks after the completion of the course. The certificate will state your name, grade, the centre number where you took the course and the date of the award.

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If you’ve not yet applied for your CELTA, choose from over 350 authorised centres in over 80 countries.

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If you’ve got an interview for your CELTA or have been accepted on a course, we’ve got everything you need to prepare.

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CELTA written assignment: focus on the learner(s)

The purpose of the assignment

The CELTA handbook (5th edition) explains that this assignment allows you to demonstrate that you can:

• show awareness of how a learner’s/learners’ background(s), previous learning experience and learning preferences affect learning
• identify the learner’s/learners’ language and/or skills needs
• correctly use terminology relating to the description of language systems and/or language skills
• select appropriate material and/or resources to aid the learner’s/learners’ language and/or skills development
• provide a rationale for using specific activities with a learner/learners
• find, select and reference information from one or more sources
• use 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 general approaches to teaching.

Most centres choose one of two ways to set this assignment:

• You may be asked to focus on a specific learner from one of the teaching practice classes or
• You may be asked to focus on the whole of a teaching practice class.

You may even be given a choice.

Whichever assignment you are set, the considerations are the same but, obviously, more depth will be required in 1. than in 2.

This is in the genre of an Information Report and it has three parts:

• A brief introduction stating the basic information about the learner or the class.  Say what you are doing and who the subject of the investigation is.
• An area-by-area report giving the data you have gathered, noting strengths, weaknesses and needs as you go along.
• sources for language and/or skills development and, if it's needed, personal support
• ideas for language and/or skill focused activities Link this section carefully to the data you have gathered, explaining why you think the ideas will help.

You can combine the second and third areas if that makes sense to you so two structures are possible:

Choose one structure or the other.  Do not mix them up or you'll be incoherent.

• An example of the learner's writing.  The neatest way to get this is to write a short note to the learner saying who you are, giving a bit of background (age, background, personal details etc.) and asking the learner to respond in like manner.  That way, you get the personal stuff you need and an example of how well they can handle the simple language needed to give some personal data (name, age, occupation etc.).
• reasons for learning English
• language learning background
• student’s opinion of their strengths and weaknesses in English
• preferred class and activity types
• You can, of course, gather some of this data by designing a questionnaire.  See the guide to needs analysis to get some ideas.  There is an example of a basic needs analysis form here.
• Record the interview and listen to it again, making notes of consistent errors and the learner's communicative effectiveness.  You can provide a tapescript of some important parts of the interview to exemplify the areas you think need work in the assignment.  You will need the person's permission to do this, of course.
• If recording is not an option, make as many notes as you can on the learner's use of English as you go along.
• Learning style.  The new edition of the handbook (the 5th) has removed any explicit reference to learning styles because the theories that underlie such things have been comprehensibly debunked.  The syllabus now contains reference to learning preferences.  However, for reasons which are slightly obscure, some CELTA centres and tutors are wedded to the idea of learning styles.  Many will let you have a copy of something called a VARK questionnaire to give to the subject.  There is, of course, a guide to learning styles on this site but you should treat the area with great scepticism.  See also the article attempting to debunk the whole concept .

• You need to set out some information about the people in the class: ages, occupations, reasons for learning etc.  See the table above.  The only sensible way to do this with a group of people is via a questionnaire needs analysis.  See the guide to needs analysis to get some ideas.  There is an example of a basic needs analysis form here.
• You can investigate learning preferences but will have to identify from the data any commonalities in the class rather than details of each learner.  See point f., above.
• For the final section of the assignment where you make suggestions, you'll need to be a bit more generalised and identify common aims and needs rather than individual ones. One approach is to identify the two weakest and the two strongest students and identify appropriate activities, resources and aims for them.  That should also cover everyone in between.

• The student is studying English for no apparent  purpose at the moment.  He or she may need the language in the future for some purpose but at the moment that is not clear.  The student may also need the language as part of a general education, for access to English-language websites and for travel and tourism. This student needs General English (a GE learner).
• This student need English to settle and integrate in an English-speaking culture for an indefinite time. This student needs English as a Second or Other Language (an ESOL learner)
• This student needs English for business and commercial purposes either because his/her professional setting demands it or because she/he is intending to study Business and/or Management. This student needs Business English (a BE learner).
• This student intends to study in an English-medium institution such as a university or college. This student needs English for Academic Purposes (an EAP learner).
• This student needs English for a narrow area of concern such as access to written scientific texts, to work in a particular occupation such as the hospitality industry, air traffic control, the merchant marine, the transport industry etc. This student needs English for a Specific Purpose (an ESP learner).
• All of the above can be subdivided into a bewildering range of acronyms including, e.g., EGOP (English for General Occupational Purposes), EGPP (English for General Professional Purposes), ELF (English as a Lingua-Franca, for communication between non-native speakers of English worldwide), English in the Workplace (EiW), English for Professional Purposes (EPP) and so on.

• "I want to learn English to fit into an English-speaking culture and work and socialise." This student has Integrative Motivation (to integrate into a cultural milieu).
• "I want to learn English to use the language in business meetings / to study a subject at university." This student has Instrumental Motivation (using the language as a tool to do other things).
• "I love the language and enjoy learning it and speaking it." This student has Intrinsic Motivation (the pressure to learn comes from within).
• "I have been told to learn English by my employer / parents / sponsor." This student has Extrinsic Motivation (the pressure to learn comes from outside).

Be careful not to be too dogmatic here.  People are complicated and their motivations are often obscure, even to themselves, so try to avoid statements such as

This learner is extrinsically motivated.

Prefer, instead, something a bit more careful such as:

From the data supplied in the short questionnaire, it seems that this learners is aware of the need to learn enough English to be able to function in the workplace but is also keen to access English-speaking websites and understand something of the cultures of English-speaking societies.  She has, therefore, a mix of instrumental and integrative motivation and needs English as a tool as well as for cultural access.

There is a guide to motivation on this site but you do not need all the detail now.  If you would like a simpler guide to motivation which still gives more data than here, there is one in the TKT course materials (new tabs).

Obviously, the suggestions you make will be determined by what you have discovered about the learner(s).

• Why do you suggest it?
• What's its target?
• How will it help?
• Include both ideas for activities and ideas for materials to use and topics to focus on.
• Identify both language structure and skills needs. For example, From the data summarised in point xxx above, I would argue that a priority for this learner / these learners is to enhance his / her / their reading skills because they / he / she identify it as a weakness and this is supported by my observations.  Good reading skills are needed for study in the UK and the majority of these EAP students / this EAP student will be going on to university in the next few months.  Therefore, I suggest using xxxx in class and starting a reading club using xxxx books and resources.  The student(s) will also benefit from a specific focus on both reading for gist and reading intensively so I suggest the following activities will be helpful... or Another area of weakness I have identified in point yyyy above is the student(s)' lack of vocabulary . Therefore, I suggest a specific focus on general academic vocabulary including using yyyy as a resource and spending at least one lesson per day focusing on common academic collocations (such as reasonable to argue, arising from the data, developing the point further etc.).  This will improve the learner(s)' ability to be precise in terms of meaning and use conventional language in academic essays. The class / student will also benefit from work on cohesive devices such as therefore, firstly, finally, because, furthermore etc. as his / her / their writing shows that they avoid or misuse these structures in general (see appendix 2, and the comments in point z).  This will make the learner(s)' writing in particular more accessible, better organised and fluent.

Do not repeat yourself here.  It's not necessary and you don't have enough words to play with. What you do need to do here is identify the main facts and the most important suggestions.  In other words, prioritise .

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.

• learning preferences
• the questionnaire and a summary of the results
• samples of work
• I have identified at least 5 language problems the learner(s) have / has
• I have given examples
• general future work
• specific ideas to deal with the problems I identified

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.

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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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• Oct 10, 2023

Focus on the Learner - help with CELTA Assignment One

Updated: Apr 26

On a CELTA course , you'll have to complete four written assignments. Each assignment is between 750-1000 words. The assignments can be assigned in any order, but most typically, the Focus on the Learner assignment comes first.

The first part of the assignment is a profile of the learner, or learners. Your tutors may set this up in a number of different ways, and might ask you to write a profile of one student or of a group of students. You may be asked to collect an example of the student's writing or to record them speaking. Then you'll have to write a profile of the student.

Typically, you're asked to give some general background facts, like age, nationality and occupation. This should be easy! You're then asked to give some more specific information that might inform how these students learn or what they want or need to learn. This will include their first language and their previous learning experiences, but you will also probably be asked to comment on motivations and possibly on learner preferences or styles.

If you're discussing motivations, it's good to mention the idea of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Learner styles aren't really seen as very valid any more, but if you've been asked to mention them, the most common ones to discuss are visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.

I've used words like 'comment' and 'mention' because the important thing to remember is that you're not writing an in-depth profile of the student or students. You're writing a short profile of two or three hundred words. This is not a research paper for a masters degree and so if you've only collected a little information about the student(s), that's OK.

Because it's the first section, I've noticed that many CELTA trainees tend to spend a long time writing this part of the assignment, and then less time on the later sections. However, in my experience, it's the later sections of the assignment that tend to be the parts that people are asked to resubmit, so make sure to give the later sections plenty of time as well.

In the middle part of the assignment, you'll probably be asked to identify some of the student's (or students') strengths and weaknesses. You might be asked to comment on their ability with the skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) or just with language items (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation). Make sure to read the question given carefully, so you know exactly what you're being asked for. There's no point in listing ten points about a student's grammar mistakes if you were asked about their reading and listening skills.

The final, crucial, sections of the assignment are the ones that most often cause trainees to be asked to resubmit. You will be asked to identify errors that the students have made or language areas that they need to work on. The main mistake here is when a CELTA trainee is vague. You can't simply say that that the student gets tenses wrong. You need to say which tenses the student is mixing up. You can't say that they often mispronounce words. You need to say which sound they're pronouncing wrongly.

If you are specific in your analysis of the students' errors, then the final step should be easy. This is where you're asked to identify appropriate materials for students to help them with this error/language area. Again, in different CELTA centres you might be asked to do different things - some will ask you to find a freer practice activity, others will be fine with any exercise. What is essential is that it focuses exactly on the error the student has made and/or the need you have identified. You should also make sure that the exercise or activity you've found is appropriate to the learner's level and learning preferences that you described earlier in the assignment.

In summary, to succeed in your Focus on the Learner assignment:

make sure you read the instructions from your tutors and follow them.

don't spend too much time on the general profile at the start -- make sure it's clear and then move on to the later, more focused parts.

make sure your description of the students' language needs/errors is specific

make sure the activities or exercises match the needs/errors as exactly as possible.

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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Before you go...

Find out how to save time on your CELTA assignments!

Lessons from the Classroom: CELTA Assignment

The Lessons from the Classroom CELTA assignment is slightly more accessible than other assignments on the course, but it still deserves your full attention to complete it to a high level.

It is also an extremely beneficial experience as it engages you in a form of reflective practice. This is not only helpful for your development as a teacher, but reflecting in this way can also help you in other professional and personal domains.

This assignment is also a great opportunity to show that you have been continuously learning and applying what your tutors have told you throughout your CELTA course.

I should also add that for some centres this will be CELTA Assignment 3, for others CELTA Assignment 4. This is because CELTA centres have some flexibility on certain aspects of the assignments.

Either way, this post follows the rubric and guidance from the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, as found on their official site. In short, it will all be relevant for you.

So, to give you a brief outline, throughout this post I will go through the following:

• Logistics and rubric of this assignment
• Points to include in your work
• Tips to get through it
• Books to help you with this CELTA assignment
• Useful links and relevant resources
• Examples of various Lessons from the Classroom assignments posted online

Ready? Let’s go!

What is the word limit for the ‘Lessons From the Classroom’ CELTA assignment?

As stated in the Cambridge CELTA syllabus, the word limit for the Lessons From the Classroom assignment is 750 to 1000 words .

This is the same as the Focus on the Learner assignment , as well as other CELTA course assignments .

As with all of these assignments, make sure you are within this range! It would be silly to risk losing marks because you are a few words over or under the limits given.

What do you have to include in this assignment?

In this written assignment on your CELTA course, you will have to show the following:

• That you can identify and are aware of your strengths in teaching.
• That you know what you need to do to develop as a teacher and can and suggest practical ways to do this.
• That you can reflect on your teaching,  as should be evident from the points above.
• What you have learnt by reflecting on your observations of experienced ELT professionals, probably your tutors or other teachers.

How can you evidence or demonstrate the points above in the Lessons from the Classroom CELTA Assignment ?

In terms of answering points 1-4 above,  you can do the following:

• Include a clear section on the strengths in your teaching, with specific examples. For example, state when and how you identified these strengths, and follow this with an equivalent section detailing some of your weaknesses.
• Identify specific aspects of ELT knowledge and skills which you feel need to learn the most about.
• As continued from above, if you are particularly unsure about teaching pronunciation, for example, you could identify in your assignment specific resources or workshops to attend to help you improve this aspect of your teaching.
• Mention lessons and language points that you have observed ELT professionals teaching. Go into detail about surprising or noteworthy points from the lessons you observed and how it changed your perspective .You could also mention parts of lessons that you observed which reaffirmed or validated your own teaching practice, perhaps through things that you have already done in your TP sessions.

Tips for the Lessons from the Classroom CELTA Assignment

With the above points in mind, below are some key tips to help you complete this task to the best standard that you can.

Keep a Diary

Keep a diary throughout the course to help you reflect on all that you have learnt and the journey that you have been on.

You will have the CELTA 5 booklet that contain some space for this, however I would recommend using a  diary or journal of your own in addition to this.

If you complete a few words in here at least 3-4 days a week (it doesn’t have to be any more than this), then this assignment should more or less write itself come the end of the course.

If you do not like writing in this way, you could equally keep a video or audio record on your smartphone or other device . Just hit record and go over your thoughts for the day in 30 seconds to 1 minute. You can’t say that would be too much!

You could even post to Instagram with a hashtag like #celtadiary  (although there’s not much there yet!) and take a selfie each day. It doesn’t have to be a chore!

The problem is that if you do not do something like  this, when it comes to the end of the course, you will likely be exhausted.

Without a diary  or  journal , you may struggle to remember these things, not least because you feel so tired with all that you have learnt throughout the CELTA course!

Be Specific

Hopefully you’ve got this message from the bullet points in a previous section, but just in case, here’s a little bit more on it.

When you are specific in your observations and writing, you make it much easier for yourself and for your tutors to understand exactly what you are trying to say.

You will also have many moments and experiences to reflect on. So, if you can, state the exact language point at a certain part of a lesson during a specific teaching practice session. For example:

“Near the start of TP3, I was eliciting information from the pre-intermediate students’ to confirm their prior knowledge of the past perfect. From their answers, I realised I had assumed that they would know more about this language point than they did, which caused problems for the rest of my lesson. This made me realise that making such assumptions could be problematic for future lessons, and therefore I decided to pitch subsequent lessons at a slightly lower level for that group.”

Using Clear, Accurate and Appropriate Language

If you’re concerned about your ability to write clearly, accurately and appropriately for this assignment, as is a key part of the rubric for this, below are a few things you can do.

The first thing I would recommend for anyone, native or non-native speaker, is to print out the assignment on paper and go over it by hand.

I know timing can be an issue which makes you think this is not possible, but even if you do it quite quickly by hand, I’m sure you will identify more issues than by spending the same amount of time checking it on a screen.

When checking on paper, treat this as if you were marking a student’s written work, take a red pen and add any corrections as needed.

I do this all the time for most of my blog posts (including this one), and for any formal written work I need to submit. Although the odd error still does slip through the net (!),  I find many more errors than I do by looking at them on the screen.

I also quickly become aware of awkward language of sentences through doing this, again something which I don’t always sense when I am looking at it on a screen.

Another thing you can do here is to swap your work with someone else on the course whom you trust. Obviously, this is a judgement call on your part but if there is someone who you feel you can trust in this way, then just ask and see what they say.

Even if the person reading it is not a CELTA tutor, they should still be able to identify awkward parts of language or points which are unclear more readily than you, the writer.

Useful Links & Relevant Resources for this CELTA Assignment

For further recommended reading and resources, below are some useful links for you:

• This guide to the assignment by ELT Concourse has lots of detailed questions to think about and consider and is well worth a read.
• This video by Jo Gakonga of ELT Training is very detailed and helpful.

• Jo Gakonga also has posted this slideshare presentation of the same video:

Books for the Lessons from the Classroom Assignment

In terms of books, you will certainly benefit from reading around the topic. Here are the most useful books to check out:

• This book can help you to consider relevant areas for teacher development in your future in the ELT profession.
• An extremely popular book which will serve you well before, during and after the CELTA course.I like Scrivener’s practical approach to writing and teaching and it will likely suit you if you prefer practicality over theoretical or technical aspects of teaching. His books always seem to be very ‘readable’, likely for the reason above.
• This is a fantastic guide to improve your knowledge of and ability in teaching grammar.It has many relevant practical exercises which could serve as examples in your assignment, too.
• This book helps to make teaching pronunciation clearer and more fun.Underhill is all about pronunciation as a physical activity and will likely make you think of speech in a different way as a result.
• NB: All of the above are affiliate links, as with links to the diary and journal. This means no difference in price for you but, if you choose to purchase through these links, it helps to support CELTA Helper to continue to publish content and help people like you on their CELTA journey.

Example ‘Lessons from the Classroom’ Assignments with PDFs

Here are some examples frrom around the web that you might like to read. Remember – if you want to download  from most of the sites below, you will either need to create a free account or possibly have to pay. It is up to you whether you want to do that but all documents are free to view!

I should also add that these are examples which students have uploaded. It does not mean that they are exemplary, rather that they can give you an idea of the finished work.

• CELTA Assignment 4: Lessons from the Classroom by Iuliia Kumicheva on Academia.edu
• CELTA Assignment 4-Lessons from the Classroom by Jai Kumar on Academia.edu
• CELTA Assignment Three: Lessons from the Classroom by Joss Wright on Cite SeerX (which certainly looks like a trustworthy website from first glance)
• CELTA Lessons From the Classroom by tranzit on Scribd.com

To round up, you should now be able to see that the lessons from the classroom CELTA assignment is  much more about you being an active learner than anything else.

Following the steps outlined above should help you to meet the key requirements of this assignment on your C ELTA course.

If you also have this assignment in mind throughout your course, then you should have little trouble in writing it since you will be thinking in this way from the start. On the CELTA, self-reflection will help you, just as it will in your future work.

If you have any questions about this assignment that are still not answered, please leave them in the comments below and I will get back to you!

Best of luck with your assignment and the rest of your course!

PS You may also like to get your assignments or application checked by Scribendi – an online proofreading service (affiliate link) I used to work for that provides high-quality work.

More Helpful Content For You:

Stephen Beale

After taking the CELTA back in 2007, I have since gained over 11 years' experience of teaching English in various countries. I have also worked in EAP for several years and like sharing what I've learnt along the way here.

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Written Assignments

Written Assignments: What they are and how to pass them!

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Related Tasks (LRT)

CELTA Written Assignments – Language Skills Related Tasks (LSRT)

CELTA Written Assignments – Focus on the Learner (FL)

CELTA Written Assignments – Lessons from the Classroom (LC)

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CELTA Assignment 4-Lessons from the Classroom

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Writing a Thank You Email in Business Communication

The Communication Spotlight features innovative instructors who teach written, oral, digital/technological, kinetic, and visual communication modes.

Jennifer Hite received her BA majoring in Environmental Studies with a minor in Political Science from University of California at Santa Barbara, her MA in Communication Management from the Annenberg School of Communication at University of Southern California. She received a PhD in Organizational Behavior at UCI/The Paul Merage School of Business. Professor Hite has been an Instructor at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, School of Business Administration at USC and UCI/The Paul Merage School of Business. She is a member of the Academy of Management, International Communication Association and the Society for Human Resources Management.  

What is the assignment? 

Thank You Email Assignment Prompt

Write a message : The purpose of the message is to thank someone who has helped you to achieve your goals.

Think back on your life. Who has helped you to be where you are now or helped you decide on the path to take? Your note can be written to a former employer, a former professor or teacher, a mentor, a coach, anyone who you feel grateful to for their time and help. Because this is a business communications class and this is a formal business message, you may not write to a family member.

The message should be at least three paragraphs (opening, body and closing) and should be able to be viewed on a single screen when opened (no or little scrolling is needed to read the message). 

Planning and brainstorming : This is not a general, generic thank you email. Your purpose is to thank the recipient for helping you reach a goal, and the content will give examples of how the person helped you reach your goals.

How does it work?

The thank you email assignment is the first writing assignment students do in MGMT 191W. It’s not too intimidating, yet they learn how to structure a routine message and a professional email. They learn how to organize paragraphs and they create and use a signature block. One of the nice outcomes is that once they send the email to the person they are thanking, they usually get a lovely, warm response in return.

What do students say?

“The Thank You Email assignment taught me to use the “You” attitude effectively [audience-centered approach] so that I wouldn’t get carried away talking about myself and my accomplishments as a result of their help. Keeping the recipient at the forefront as often as possible can make the letter more genuine and convey my gratefulness accordingly. I liked this assignment because it helped me learn a skill that is extremely valuable in maintaining relationships, easy to do, yet is often overlooked.” – Student Response

Student Artifact: 

This student took to heart our instructions, to find a more sophisticated way of reminding recipients how they knew them in the first paragraph instead of “I was your student in 2019.” It’s a bit of problem solving that nudges them towards thinking more carefully about word choice. The introduction sets up the email and the middle paragraph uses specific examples to illustrate why they appreciate the recipient. It ends on a positive, warm, and upbeat note.

Why does this work?

This context-dependent writing assignment encourages students to identify a very specific audience – just one person! – and craft a thoughtful, genre-specific piece of writing to connect with that audience. This helps students build professional communication skills and build facility with the professional email communication genres. 

Check out these resources for developing context-dependent assignments in your communication classes:

• Professor Hite provided a Tip Sheet that she developed and uses in her classroom. If you offer a similar assignment in your classroom, you might think about providing Professor Hite’s Tip Sheet for your students.
• The CEWC posted a student-facing resource page on Best Practices for Emailing Instructors and Professors
• Start thinking about audience, genre, and the rhetorical situation with Understanding Writing Situations from WAC Clearinghouse

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10 Ways to Detect AI Writing Without Technology

As more of my students have submitted AI-generated work, I’ve gotten better at recognizing it.

AI-generated papers have become regular but unwelcome guests in the undergraduate college courses I teach. I first noticed an AI paper submitted last summer, and in the months since I’ve come to expect to see several per assignment, at least in 100-level classes.

I’m far from the only teacher dealing with this. Turnitin recently announced that in the year since it debuted its AI detection tool, about 3 percent of papers it reviewed were at least 80 percent AI-generated.

Just as AI has improved and grown more sophisticated over the past 9 months, so have teachers. AI often has a distinct writing style with several tells that have become more and more apparent to me the more frequently I encounter any.

Before we get to these strategies, however, it’s important to remember that suspected AI use isn’t immediate grounds for disciplinary action. These cases should be used as conversation starters with students and even – forgive the cliché – as a teachable moment to explain the problems with using AI-generated work. 

To that end, I’ve written previously about how I handled these suspected AI cases , the troubling limitations and discriminatory tendencies of existing AI detectors , and about what happens when educators incorrectly accuse students of using AI . 

With those caveats firmly in place, here are the signs I look for to detect AI use from my students. 

1. How to Detect AI Writing: The Submission is Too Long 

When an assignment asks students for one paragraph and a student turns in more than a page, my spidey sense goes off. 

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Almost every class does have one overachieving student who will do this without AI, but that student usually sends 14 emails the first week and submits every assignment early, and most importantly, while too long, their assignment is often truly well written. A student who suddenly overproduces raises a red flag.

2. The Answer Misses The Mark While Also Being Too Long

Being long in and of itself isn’t enough to identify AI use, but it's often overlong assignments that have additional strange features that can make it suspicious. 

For instance, the assignment might be four times the required length yet doesn’t include the required citations or cover page. Or it goes on and on about something related to the topic but doesn’t quite get at the specifics of the actual question asked. 

3. AI Writing is Emotionless Even When Describing Emotions 

If ChatGPT was a musician it would be Kenny G or Muzak. As it stands now, AI writing is the equivalent of verbal smooth jazz or grey noise. ChatGPT, for instance, has this very peppy positive vibe that somehow doesn’t convey actual emotion. 

One assignment I have asks students to reflect on important memories or favorite hobbies. You immediately sense the hollowness of ChatGPT's response to this kind of prompt. For example, I just told ChatGPT I loved skateboarding as a kid and asked it for an essay describing that. Here’s how ChatGPT started: 

As a kid, there was nothing more exhilarating than the feeling of cruising on my skateboard. The rhythmic sound of wheels against pavement, the wind rushing through my hair, and the freedom to explore the world on four wheels – skateboarding was not just a hobby; it was a source of unbridled joy.

You get the point. It’s like an extended elevator jazz sax solo but with words.  

4. Cliché Overuse

Part of the reason AI writing is so emotionless is that its cliché use is, well, on steroids.

Take the skateboarding example in the previous entry. Even in the short sample, we see lines such as “the wind rushing through my hair, and the freedom to explore the world on four wheels.” Students, regardless of their writing abilities, always have more original thoughts and ways of seeing the world than that. If a student actually wrote something like that, we’d encourage them to be more authentic and truly descriptive.

Of course, with more prompt adjustments, ChatGPT and other AI’s tools can do better, but the students using AI for assignments rarely put in this extra time.

5. The Assignment Is Submitted Early

I don’t want to cast aspersions on those true overachievers who get their suitcases packed a week before vacation starts, finish winter holiday shopping in July, and have already started saving for retirement, but an early submission may be the first signal that I’m about to read some robot writing.

For example, several students this semester submitted an assignment the moment it became available. That is unusual, and in all of these cases, their writing also exhibited other stylistic points consistent with AI writing.

Warning: Use this tip with caution as it is also true that many of my best students have submitted assignments early over the years.

6. The Setting Is Out of Time

AI image generators frequently have little tells that signal the AI model that created it doesn’t understand what the world actually looks like — think extra fingers on human hands or buildings that don’t really follow the laws of physics.

When AI is asked to write fiction or describe something from a student’s life, similar mistakes often occur. Recently, a short story assignment in one of my classes resulted in several stories that took place in a nebulous time frame that jumped between modern times and the past with no clear purpose.

If done intentionally this could actually be pretty cool and give the stories a kind of magical realism vibe, but in these instances, it was just wonky and out-of-left-field, and felt kind of alien and strange. Or, you know, like a robot had written it.

7. Excessive Use of Lists and Bullet Points  

Here are some reasons that I suspect students are using AI if their papers have many lists or bullet points: 

1. ChatGPT and other AI generators frequently present information in list form even though human authors generally know that’s not an effective way to write an essay. 

2. Most human writers will not inherently write this way, especially new writers who often struggle with organizing information.

3. While lists can be a good way to organize information, presenting more complex ideas in this manner can be .…

4 … annoying. 

5. Do you see what I mean? 

6. (Yes, I know, it's ironic that I'm complaining about this here given that this story is also a list.)

8. It’s Mistake-Free 

I’ve criticized ChatGPT’s writing here yet in fairness it does produce very clean prose that is, on average, more error-free than what is submitted by many of my students. Even experienced writers miss commas, have long and awkward sentences, and make little mistakes – which is why we have editors. ChatGPT’s writing isn’t too “perfect” but it’s too clean.  

9. The Writing Doesn’t Match The Student’s Other Work  

Writing instructors know this inherently and have long been on the lookout for changes in voice that could be an indicator that a student is plagiarizing work. 

AI writing doesn't really change that. When a student submits new work that is wildly different from previous work, or when their discussion board comments are riddled with errors not found in their formal assignments, it's time to take a closer look. 

10. Something Is Just . . . Off 

The boundaries between these different AI writing tells blur together and sometimes it's a combination of a few things that gets me to suspect a piece of writing. Other times it’s harder to tell what is off about the writing, and I just get the sense that a human didn’t do the work in front of me. 

I’ve learned to trust these gut instincts to a point. When confronted with these more subtle cases, I will often ask a fellow instructor or my department chair to take a quick look (I eliminate identifying student information when necessary). Getting a second opinion helps ensure I’ve not gone down a paranoid “my students are all robots and nothing I read is real” rabbit hole. Once a colleague agrees something is likely up, I’m comfortable going forward with my AI hypothesis based on suspicion alone, in part, because as mentioned previously, I use suspected cases of AI as conversation starters rather than to make accusations. 

Again, it is difficult to prove students are using AI and accusing them of doing so is problematic. Even ChatGPT knows that. When I asked it why it is bad to accuse students of using AI to write papers, the chatbot answered: “Accusing students of using AI without proper evidence or understanding can be problematic for several reasons.” 

Then it launched into a list. 

• Best Free AI Detection Sites
• My Student Was Submitting AI Papers. Here's What I Did
• She Wrote A Book About AI in Education. Here’s How AI Helped

Erik Ofgang is a Tech & Learning contributor. A journalist,  author  and educator, his work has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Smithsonian, The Atlantic, and Associated Press. He currently teaches at Western Connecticut State University’s MFA program. While a staff writer at Connecticut Magazine he won a Society of Professional Journalism Award for his education reporting. He is interested in how humans learn and how technology can make that more effective. 

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