Learning Grammar before starting CELTA

[dakky]

Hi there,

I am starting a CELTA course in 10 days and at the interview we agreed that I needed to do a fair bit of learning/brushing up on my grammar skills, as trying to take in the tefl material alongside learning English grammar would be hard.

Basically there seems to be a lot of different things to learn! My knowledge is pretty bad, although I *should* be able to pick things up, but am getting quite nervous. Any suggestions on what to focus on? Which types of words I need to learn? I have bought two books; Practical English Usage by Swan and English Grammar in Use.

Any other resources perhaps online to help me significantly?

Thanks very much!

[TEFL World Wiki]

The books you have bought are excellent for TEFL. I would simply begin by reading them and making sure you are familiar with Parts of Speech, Sentence Construction and Verb Tenses and Usage.

It will take time, but you need to know these things! Good luck!

[5jj]

The books you have bought are excellent for TEFL. I would simply begin by reading them and making sure you are familiar with Parts of Speech, Sentence Construction and Verb Tenses and Usage.

It will take time, but you need to know these things! Good luck!

Good advice.

I'd be even more basic, and start with the names of the parts of speech and the names of the tenses and recognising how they are formed. You can't really begin to talk about grammar unless you have some basic terminology.

[dakky]

Thanks for the advice guys...

Good advice.

I'd be even more basic, and start with the names of the parts of speech and the names of the tenses and recognising how they are formed. You can't really begin to talk about grammar unless you have some basic terminology.

My problem is, looking at usingenglish.com/glossary.htm(I'm new so can't post links) there is so much! Who knows what to focus on and what to ignore! Even the glossary in the front of Swan's book is pretty overwhelming...

[5jj]

Thanks for the advice guys...
My problem is, looking at usingenglish.com/glossary.htm(I'm new so can't post links) there is so much! Who knows what to focus on and what to ignore! Even the glossary in the front of Swan's book is pretty overwhelming...

You have chosen to train to teach English, so you are going to have to get to grips with it.

If you are not fairly confident that you can identify the following by the time you start the course, then you may be in for a rough time. (Note- I wrote 'identify', not 'define'):

Noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, article (definite and indefinite), determiner

present simple, present continuous/progressive
past simple, past continuous/progressive
present perfect, present perfect continuous/progressive
past perfect, past perfect continuous/progressive.

If you are having trouble with identifying the verb forms, have a look at page 30 in this: http://www.gramorak.com/Articles/VerbForms.pdf.

[Alex Case]

You certainly don't need to know all of Swan before you start the course. Priorities:

- Identifying parts of speech (noun etc) both in individual words and of spaces in a sentence
- Knowing the names of the major tenses and at least one meaning for each

[Tdol]

Concentrate on the basics as Fivejedjon and Alex have suggested. If you can look at a basic sentence and identify nouns, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, etc, as well as the tense, you're off to a very good start.

My problem is, looking at usingenglish.com/glossary.htm(I'm new so can't post links) there is so much!

Don't worry too much about that- I am sure I don't know everything there and I wrote it.

[dakky]

Don't worry too much about that- I am sure I don't know everything there and I wrote it.

haha


Well I am feeling much better now. Have learnt a fair bit, pretty sure my tenses are ok. Some of the hardest things to identify are the little join words; prepositions and such...

Plenty of things that I am still messing up, but c'est la vie.

Cheers

[Psiconaut]

Thanks for the advice guys...



My problem is, looking at usingenglish.com/glossary.htm(I'm new so can't post links) there is so much! Who knows what to focus on and what to ignore! Even the glossary in the front of Swan's book is pretty overwhelming...

I have exactly the same problem. And I'm not really interested in taking some private lessons right now as they are quite expensive :S