7th CELTA Day

Hi dudes, what's up?

Last week, I went to attend my first observation of a CELTA certificated teacher class. I decided to watch one of our tutor's class. His name's Bjarne. It was amazingly clarifying to me how important CCQs are when explaining things to students. CCQs stand for Concept Check Questions. It's a very effective way of checking students' real understanding of vocabulary, grammar or meaning. In the traditional academic teaching method teachers used to spend hours trying to explain something which when asked, 'got it' students would nod and smile but remain 'clueless'. And, when they had to put what they just learned into practice, they proved thirty seconds later by some simple mistake that they totally haven't learned at all.
Therefore, CCQs are now a relevant part of our class preparation. Let's take an example. Bjarne was teaching vocabulary which was a lead-in task for a further listening task. He asked students to find two similar words in a text. Students came up with the words 'overloaded' and 'overwhelmed'. OK, so far so good, these two words
ave similar meanings, alright. But then he asked them: are the words completely similar? Yes, (but with a different aspect). Can you be overloaded with work? Yes. Can you be overwhelmed with work? Yes. But then again, can you be overloaded with emotions? No. Can you be overwhelmed with emotions? Yes. So, that's one of the peculiarities the words that are similar in meaning but can be used in different contexts. In a traditional methodology teachers would simply explain their meanings and students would never know how or when to use them.
But, with CCQs, teachers 'never' give the meaning, but rather make them think about it or come up with it. Furthermore, I could see how asking 'Do you understand?' can be one of the least useful questions you can ever ask in an English language classroom. Why? Because if students do understand the question 'Do you understand?' they will probably just say 'Yes' anyway, just to keep you happy. And they all nod and smile, but remain 'clueless'. Now, with CCQs teachers can make sure they are really learning and the classes run as smoothly as teachers would dream to be. It's a brilliant insight someone once had to invent them!

Cheerio,

Flávia Chiacchia