WHAT IS ELICITING?Eliciting is all about drawing the answers out of the students, rather than giving them the correct answers yourself.

Learning to elicit answers is a critical part of teaching EFL and a vital element in passing the CELTA course. Without incorporating eliciting into your lessons, you cannot continue to achieve At Standard (or above) lessons.

WHY IS ELICITING IMPORTANT?Eliciting is one of the most critical skills you will learn and use on your CELTA course.

Failing to elicit means failing to pass your CELTA.

All learners learn best when they are personally involved in the acquisition of new skills and when they exercise their memory in retrieving previously learned information.

ELICITING ON THE CELTA COURSEPeople are famous for not hearing or retaining information dictated to them in a classroom setting - in one ear and

out the other, as we say. But if learners are invited to be an integral part of the process, the target language is much easier to learn.

Here's an example:

Not eliciting

With eliciting

Teacher: A banana is a fruit that grows on trees in hot climates. The plural is bananas. It's a noun.

Teacher: What do we call that long, curved fruit? It's yellow. Anyone?

Students: Banana?

Teacher: Yes, banana [writes the word on the board]. What part of speech is 'banana?'

Students: A noun.

Teacher: Yes, good. [writes (n.) on the board]. It's a regular noun, so the plural is...?Students:

Bananas

Teacher: Yep, bananas. And where do they grow?

Students: Africa? Domincan Republic? Indonesia?

Teacher: Yes, and what do these places have in common?

Students: Oh, bananas grow in hot countries.

Eliciting is a key part of the CELTA course and something you need to use as soon as possible in your lessons. After the first couple of lessons, you'll be marked down severely if you continue to teach target language (vocab, meaning, activity answers) without first trying to elicit from the class.

WHAT TYPES OF ELICITING EXIST?

1- ELICIT VOCABULARY

Try to avoid writing a word on the board and asking the class "what does this mean?" -That isn't eliciting and can result in lost marks if it becomes a habit in your lessons.

2- ELICITING GRAMMAR

3- ELICITING PARTS OF SPEECH

Students: confident? smug? arrogant?

Teacher: What conditional did you use in exercise 1?

Students: 3rd conditional.

Teacher: Is it describing a present or past situation?

Students: Past

Teacher: A real situation in the past?

Students: No, an imaginary situation.

Teacher: What part of speech is the word 'about' here? ("I'm

excited about the party.")

Students: A preposition?

Teacher: What about "I'm"?

Students: The subject plus the verb 'to be'

Teacher: So why did Sarah not enter the old house?

Students: Because she was scared.

Teacher: Does the reading text say she was scared?

Students: No, but she had a nightmare the night before

about bats. So she is probably scared.

5- ELICITING ANSWERS TO ACTIVITIES

4- ELICITING MEANING

Teacher: So if "Dad let them swim" means the children were allowed to swim, what do you think "Dad made them swim" means?Students: He forced them?

Be careful with eliciting meaning. If you don't provide clues (such as opposites, or a wider context to refer to) it can leave the class feeling frustrated if no-one knows the answer and you continue to elicit what cannot be elicited.

6- PRONUNCIATION CANNOT BE ELICITED!

You cannot ask students "how do we pronounce cough" because you'll either be met with a chorus of heavily-accented best attempts, or the class will just feel frustrated that you haven't taught them yet. Pronunciation needs to be presented by the teacher supported with phonemes and drilling.

Teacher: What do you call somebody who looks like this? (The teacher walks straight and looks firm)

Give students enough time to think and form their answers. Remember that English is not their native language

and it can take longer than usual to process the question and offer the answers. Attempt to elicit meanings,

grammar, vocab and parts of speech first, but if no answers are offered by the class, you should jump seamlessly

into assuming the target language is new to them and teach it.

In other words, don't continue to elicit what no-one knows! In any class, there is often a dominant student (or

two) who is quick to offer answers. This can be useful for moving the lesson along (e.g. identifying parts of

speech) but you should not assume the rest of the class also know or understand. Always confirm the answers

and, if appropriate, write some reference on the board.

FALSE FRIENDS ON THE CELTA COURSEEvery language has false friends with English words. There's simply no way CELTA trainees can learn them all and cross-reference each learner's native language. Instead, we must use concept checking questions (CCQs) and eliciting to get into the heads of our learners, and really understand what they think they know.

Here are just a few false friends with examples of concept checking questions.

Gift = Poison (German)

CCQ: "What was the last gift you received?"

Sensible = Sensitive (Spanish)

CCQ: "How can you be sensible with money?"

Beyond concept checking questions, there's not many ways to incorporate knowledge of false friends into your lesson plans or teaching as you'll very likely be teaching a class of mixed nationalities. However, you can benefit by making a relevant reference to false friends in your Focus on the Learner written assignment.

WHAT ARE FALSE FRIENDS?False friends are pairs of words or phrases in different languages that look or sound similar, but mean different things.

The popular example is the English embarrassed (feeling self-conscious and awkward) and the Spanish embarazada (pregnant). It's easy to see why a Spanish learner might think they understand due to the similarity and go on to make mistakes in their vocabulary.

WHY ARE FALSE FRIENDS IMPORTANT?False friends are an important type of learner errors to understand, as they can easily remain undetected by monitoring in teaching practice. Without the proper use of concept checking questions, a learner can go for weeks or months thinking they understand some vocabulary, developing bad habits, and finally embarrassing themselves when they discover the true meaning in a real-life social situation.

MONITORING ON THE CELTA COURSEMonitoring takes different forms depending on the activity or skill. They are all equally important and throughout your CELTA course you will probably encounter them all in various lesson types...

WRITING SKILLS MONITORING

A careful approach must be taken when monitoring students writing. On one hand they need time and space to practice the skill; you should avoid distracting them from the task wherever possible. However, on the other hand, you still need to be aware of any major problems and misunderstandings, and of course demonstrate your monitoring to your CELTA tutor.

The classic approach is to walk around the class (usually on the inside of the horseshoe of desks) and read students’ work upside-down. There’s nothing wrong with this method, but I feel you can really add some valuable tactics to the mix:

When the first student has finished, pick up their written work and read it through. This gives the others time to finish, keeps the more able students on their toes, and shows your CELTA tutor that you are taking a pro-active approach. If you spot any major mistakes, ask the student to check that section carefully - DO NOT tell them the correction, but give them the opportunity to self-correct while the class finish the task.

It’s also a good idea to avoid predictable patterns in your monitoring; most CELTA candidates naturally want to walk around the desks sequentially from left to right (or right to left). This means they risk rushing the last group of students and not spotting misunderstandings of instructions in time to correct them. Try to mix up the way you walk around the class and always keep an eye out for students who may put their hand up for help.

WHAT IS MONITORING?Monitoring is the term we use for pro-actively checking how students are progressing with learning activities such games, discussions, tests etc.

Very often, the teacher monitors by moving around the class and checking students' work as they write (or listening as they speak, in the case of speaking skills).

WHY IS MONITORING IMPORTANT?Monitoring is essential to check students understand the task instructions and to pick up on major errors early on.

It's also a critical element that you will be assessed on. If you fail to monitor in your lessons, you could fail your CELTA course.

SPEAKING SKILLS MONITORING

Probably the easiest skill to monitor. Just position yourself somewhere unobtrusive and tune in your ears to hear the students talking.

You’re listening for these things:

Misunderstanding the task you’ve set them. It’s normal for students to misunderstand instructions, especially at lower levels or in complex activities, so don’t get too stressed about it, but if you do risk losing marks if you don’t spot it through effective monitoring. (Pro Tip: You can reduce misunderstandings by demonstrating the first task to the class before the activity begins.)

If you do notice misunderstandings, you need to make a decision about how many students are struggling: if just a couple you can correct them personally, if the majority of the class has misunderstood you should stop the activity and go through a clear example as an open class.

Errors or slips in meaning, form and pronunciation, all of which you can use for delayed error correction later in the lesson. Errors are mistakes made because students haven’t yet encountered the target language; slips are mistakes made (despite knowing target language) because the students are tired, uninterested, forgetful, stressed, pressured etc.

Mistakes in the target language. For example, if the target language is 3rd conditionals, then you should listen out to make sure they are indeed using correctly formed 3rd conditionals.

Students speaking in their native languages. This can be for a few reasons:

Students may not have understood instructions (re-instruct with an example)

Close friends sitting together (mix up the seating arrangements)

Students are bored (ask them to justify some of their answers)

Students have finished the activity

Most classrooms you’ll encounter on the CELTA course have the tables laid out in a horseshoe shape. A great method of monitoring discussions in this layout is to place your chair in the middle of the horseshoe, sit down and simple tune-in to different pairs. This offers some good benefits:

1. Having your ears at the level of the students makes listening easier.

2. You reduce the teacher-presence in the room and students don’t feel under pressure.

3. You are clearly demonstrating your monitoring skills to your CELTA tutor.

LISTENING SKILLS MONITORING

This is the most difficult skill to monitor - there’s simply no way to know if your students are listening attentively and understanding the CD/tape. Of course, you can watch them during listening to see if anyone is playing with their mobile phones or straining to hear properly, but that’s about it.

With any listening activity it is always best to use a written task to see how well they understand the material. Gist tasks aren’t that useful for monitoring listening skills as they usually involve just a few top-level questions. Instead, I recommend using detailed tasks (for specific information) with answers that are easy to read upside-down (from the teacher’s perspective) as you need to avoid intrusive monitoring disrupting your students from the lesson aim of listening.

The best way to make sure you can easily read their answers is to adapt activities from the book onto handouts... that way everyone is writing on the same template that you can compare directly with your version of the correct answers.

READING SKILLS MONITORING

Very similar to monitoring listening skills in that you never really know how well students are performing until you give them a task to test their comprehension. Use large, templated worksheets to avoid having to read handwriting from students’ notebooks.

GRAMMAR & VOCABULARY MONITORINGUnlike skills lessons, language lessons (grammar, vocab and function) don’t usually involve gist or detail tasks - instead they use controlled practice and freer practice tasks.

The key to successful monitoring of CELTA language lessons is careful preparation of the activities.

By taking them ‘off the book’ and creating worksheets to hand out, students will all write their answers in the same format and, with a bit of clever planning, large enough to make your life much easier when reading upside-down!

You can be a bit more intrusive when monitoring language lessons. Don’t wait for the feedback stage before

pointing out mistakes to students - but avoid spoon-feeding them answers. Instead, it’s much better to point to the question on their worksheet and say something like “Are you sure this one is right? Have another look at the tenses you’ve used.” - Remember that students learn better by making, identifying and fixing mistakes themselves.

MORE TIPS FOR BETTER MONITORINGWorksheets are your secret weapon for effective CELTA monitoring. Learn how to adapt activities in the books to remove distractions and provide a large, easily readable format.

Even if you have amazing eyesight and can read your students’ work upside-down from across the room, make sure you still clearly demonstrate your monitoring to your CELTA tutor. They need to know you are actively monitoring at the correct times.

Monitoring is your last chance to make sure students understand the task you have set them. If you don’t pick up on misunderstandings you can end up with half the class having just finished the wrong exercise! Save yourself the stress and make sure everyone is working on the correct task.

WHAT ARE PARTS OF SPEECH?Parts of speech refers to the various roles that words play in a sentence - for example, APPLE is a noun, EAT is a verb, and LARGE is an adverb.

There's plenty more that you'll need to learn before and during your CELTA, such as articles, adverbs, auxiliary and modal verbs, pronouns and prepositions.

WHY ARE PARTS OF SPEECH IMPORTANT?Unlike native speakers, language learners need to construct their sentences carefully, paying attention to which words perform which functions (parts of speech) as they interact in the phrase or sentence.

CELTA trainees, like yourself, need to teach learners these skills using the proper parts of speech.

This is a vital area of knowledge for anyone hoping to pass the CELTA course, or indeed teach English as a foreign language in the future.

PARTS OF SPEECH ON THE CELTA COURSEYou will be using parts of speech every single day during your CELTA course, and in every lesson you teach thereafter. There's just no escaping it. Here's just some places that you will be expected to illustrate parts of speech:

Teaching grammar forms

On the whiteboard

Answering learners' questions

Giving learner feedback

Lesson planning

Adapting activities

Written assignments

etc.

When we teach parts of speech on the whiteboard, we use standard abbreviations that your learners will be very familiar with, thanks to their time spend studying English language dictionaries.

I will pass my CELTA course.subj + aux + v + pron + objThis format helps the learner to easily construct similar sentences, and to learn the grammar in a methodical way. During your CELTA course and teaching career, you'll be writing a lot of parts of speech like the example above.

DIFFERENT PARTS OF SPEECHLearning and remembering parts of speech can be daunting at first, but this guide aims to make it as easy as possible. Below are the basic parts of speech that you will use throughout your CELTA course.

SUBJECT (SUBJ.)

The subject of a sentence is the person, idea, place or thing that performs a verb (an action or state of being). All full sentences must have a subject. Remember that verbs change according to their subject.

MARY ate the ice cream.

The ICE CREAM was eaten by Mary.

SHE plays guitar.

I play guitar.

OBJECT (OBJ.)

An direct object of a sentence is a person, idea, place or thing on which was performed the action of a verb. An indirect object is involved in the action, usually as who or what the action was performed for. Don't worry if that sounds complicated; it will become clear in the examples.

Direct Objects

Mary ate the ICE CREAM.

The ice cream was eaten by MARY.

Indirect Objects

Mary gave the ice cream to JASON.

Grandma knitted JESSICA a new scarf. (This can also be written "Grandma knitted a new scarf for JESSICA")

PREPOSITION (PREP.)

These words help us to understand how two words are related in time and place.

before, after, on, off, along, against, beneath, under, for, from, in, out, inside, until etc.

His house is ON Albert Road.

He's lived there FOR four years.

His house is BETWEEN a small park and a bakery.

ADVERB (ADV.)

Adverbs usually modify a verb or adjective (but sometimes other words). They perform a lot of different functions and communicate additional information.

beautifully, calmly, hopefully, well, often, always, never, sometimes etc.

She sings WELL.

I think she sings BEAUTIFULLY.

She doesn't USUALLY perform in public.

VERB (V.)

These are words that communicate an action (read, eat, hope) or a state of being (become, be, remain). By taking different forms (he ran, I run, we will run etc.), they also communicate WHEN an action took place, and to some degree WHO did the action.

jump, help, sleep, dream, pursue, work, decide, overtake, pass, excel, am, are, is etc.

Simon ATE his dinner with chopsticks.

Hugo will be PERFORMING on TV tonight.

To ERR is human, to FORGIVE is divine.

Verbs are either regular or irregular:

Past tense verbs that ends in "ed" is regular (cooked, jumped etc.)

Past tense verbs that don't are irregular (ate, ran etc.)

Verbs also have a form called the Past Participle. These are when we use verbs as an adjective to describe something.

The book is TORN.

The necklace had been GIVEN as a birthday present.

Here's an excellent web page for learning more about past participles.

ADJECTIVE (ADJ.)

Adjectives are really easy to remember. They simply describe or modify something.

large, red, angry, beautiful, essential, tasty, Korean, leather etc.

The LEATHER chair looked WORN but EXPENSIVE.

My KOREAN teacher turns RED when he is ANGRY.

NOUN - COUNTABLE (N.)

Countable nouns are things, items and concepts that can be counted. Countable nouns can be used as a plural in a sentence, usually by simply adding an s, (but not always).

frog(s), road(s), concept(s), idea(s), sheep, men, loa(f/ves), potato(es) etc.

I left my KEYS in my HOUSE, so I have to call a LOCKSMITH.

In teaching OTHERS, we teach OURSELVES.

NOUN - (N.)

Uncountable nouns are also things, items and concepts, but - like the name suggests - they cannot be counted. Instead, we can have more, less, a bit, a lot, too much, and too little of them.

hope, advice, information, ink, sand, ice, love, hate, luggage, furniture etc.

The generator doesn't produce enough ELECTRICITY.

You have too much FURNITURE for such a small house.

He gave me three pieces of ADVICE before he left.

AUXILIARY VERB (AUX.)

You'll become very well acquainted with auxiliary verbs during your CELTA course and throughout your teaching career. They help the main verb to express slightly different meanings (technically through tense, mood or voice,

but don't worry too much about this at this point.)

am, do, has, is, are etc.

Maria HAS BEEN waiting for over an hour.

She IS leaving for Berlin tomorrow.

DOES she know the train leaves from the other platform?

MODAL VERB (MODAL / SOMETIMES JUST AUX.)

Modal verbs are a small group of auxiliary verbs that communicate permission, obligation, ability and how likely something is. Don't worry, it will all become crystal clear when you read the examples.

can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would

The weather SHOULD improve this afternoon.

He CAN'T dance to save his life.

You MUST wash your hands before dinner.

Belinda MIGHT win the gold medal this year.

PRONOUN (PRON.)

Pronouns can be used instead of nouns, often to avoid needless repetition. There are LOTS of different types of pronoun, but don't worry - it's not necessary to learn them all before the CELTA. Instead, just understand how pronouns are used in the following examples.

Without pronouns:

I like Henry. Henry always helps with work, especially when Henry, Lucy and Richard's schedules are full.

With pronouns:

I like Henry. HE always helps with work, especially when OUR schedules are full.

Here's an excellent resource on pronouns if you'd like to learn more.

ARTICLE (NO ABBREVIATION)

Articles are four small, extremely common words in the English language: a, an, the, and some. They communicate how specific or well-known something is.

Anna caught A train (which train doesn't matter in the conversation)

Anna caught THE train (the specific train is already known in the conversation, and possibly important)

SOME birds are in the garden again (which birds doesn't matter)

THE birds are in the garden again (implies the specific birds have been encountered before)

A and AN are indefinite articles. THE is a definite article. SOME is a partitive article.

Depending on where learners are from, they might find articles to be either natural and easy (Spanish, French, German etc.), or frustratingly difficult and even pointless (Poland, Russia, Czech etc.)

CONJUNCTION (CONJ.)

These words connect words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. They're normally small but common words that native speakers use every day.

and, but, or, yet, for, nor, so

Studying CELTA is hard work BUT it's very rewarding.

Viktor ran up the stairs AND fell flat on his face.

Haruto can either choose to study hard OR he will surely fail.

There's lots of good examples on this web page if you'd like to learn more.