You Know You’re a CELTA Trainee When…

 | Teaching House Nomads Blog

Being a CELTA trainee can be a consuming life experience, especially if you’re taking the intensive 4-week course. The information and teaching techniques you’re exposed to can start to gradually seep into your everyday life — sometimes in less than convenient ways! Here are 25 signs that you’ve become a dyed-in-the-wool CELTA convert:

The CELTA training course might bring changes to your daily routines
Sushi is always the answer

1. Your significant other asks where you want to go for dinner and you try to elicit “sushi.”

2. You automatically think of appropriate gist tasks when you read news articles.

3. You use hot error correction techniques to correct your friends’ grammar slips.

4. Researching your future life abroad becomes your go-to procrastination hobby.

5. You instinctively ask yourself if your aims were achieved after social interactions.

6. “Sleep” becomes a personal aim.

7. You tell your friends to check in pairs before confirming group plans.

The CELTA training course can make trainees become even more passionate about the English language
Gist tasks, anyone?

8. You make sure all your social media posts are appropriately cited.

9. You start hearing features of connected speech in your day-to-day life and wondering how you never noticed them before.

10. You get excited when you hear someone naturally use the third conditional.

11. When someone gives you instructions, you criticize how wordy they were.

12. You start asking ICQs with your friends and family.

13. You can’t consume any media without wondering if it would fit into your next lesson.

14. You start to realize how strong your own accent is.

Erica Lederman humorously listed 25 ways the CELTA training course changed her daily lives
Marker stains: all day, every day

15. You begin to question if you really know ‘how to English’ at all.

16. The letters FOL, SRT, LRT, and LFC start to show up in your dreams (or maybe nightmares…).


17. You gradually become less flustered by people staring at you blankly after you’ve said something.


18. You naturally start monitoring other people’s conversations at parties.


19. You make a list of anticipated problems and solutions before running errands.


20. You count syllables instead of sheep to help you fall asleep at night.

21. You wonder why your sandwich is blue until you realize you have whiteboard marker stains on your fingers.

Coffee is an essential energy boost in the CELTA training course
Coffee is essential

22. You convince yourself that an entire lesson was a failure because the black whiteboard marker didn’t work.


23. You get panicky just thinking about a photocopier machine.


24. You consider getting a permanent IV drip of coffee into your arm.


25. You mentally give your 8th grade Spanish teacher “below standard”.

Special thanks to my colleagues Jeff Sobieraj, James Pengelley, Sarah Adams, and Hector Navarro for ideas & inspiration!

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