This Summer I will take part in a CELTA course at the Academia Sprach-und Lernzentrum in Basel. I would like to know if anyone here has participated in this particular course and if they could answer the following questions:

- was the teaching level to the standard you expected, and did you finish the course feeling confident to teach a room full of strangers?

- what type of job opportunities arose due to having completed the CELTA? Was it difficult to find work straight away? I understand it is unlikely to find any sort of full-time position, but did many part-time job offers come up?

- would you have any tips/advice in searching for a job? eg. University students, translating jobs..

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am taking the leap of going from a well-paid job here in Basel, to trying this course and hoping that it will pay off and end up being very rewarding. I'm quite nervous about it so I welcome all information with open arms!

Thankyou in advance
Emma

sent you a pm - my positive experience! HTH

I've lived in Switzerland for 2 and a half years and teaching English never managed to pay the bills...

Hi Emma,

I took the CELTA course at academia in Basel last summer. The course was intense, of course, but also very beneficial - both in terms of what I learned & the opportunities it opened up.

I'd been teaching for about a year prior to the course, but as I was uncertified I was having trouble building it up to something full-time. A lot of schools require some kind of certification, and these tend to be the schools that pay a little bit more.

Since January, I've been working full-time (about 25 lesson hours a week) and earning enough to support my family. We're not rich, of course, but it pays the bills, and I enjoy the work.

Ian