CELTA Course at the ILA, Ho Chi Minh City, Week 1/4



ILA school where im studying



Just finished the first week of the CELTA course. Its been very good but hard work. The course is very intense and most days ive been doing 12 hour days to keep up with the workload. Ive also got an assignment to do this weekend which will probably take up all of Saturday and Sunday... Its like having a proper job!!

I got to meet all my class mates on Monday. Its a really good group. I thought id be one of the oldest on the course but the ages vary alot and I'd guess, out of the 17 people on the course, im somewhere in the middle. The people on the course are from all over the place, most are American but there are also Australians, English and a couple of other countries. The people are great and its nice to hear similar reasons as me for taking the course. A number of the students are already teaching in other countries (China, Taiwan, Japan) and are taking this course to improve their skills so they can get promotions or get into better schools. Quite a few people want to work at the ILA after they finish.

I've done three lessons so far this week. 1 x 20 minutes and 2 x 40 minutes. The planning was alot of work but I did pretty well and I'm getting some good feedback. As its a private language school im teaching Vietnamese students with ages ranging from 18 - 30. As we are training the lessons are offered for free to local students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to come to the school which is a good thing to do. All the students are very friendly and hardworking although I'm finding the names challenging to pronounce.