CELTA interview advice?

[Tullia]

Hey guys!

I just wanted to share with you all the exciting news that I've been offered an interview for the CELTA course I want to do! (Milan, 5 weeks, November).

It's going to be a Skype interview, because flying out there would obviously be a bit excessive. I'm really excited and very nervous.

I really want to do this particular course, for two reasons. It's a five week course and lessons are only four days a week, which will be better for me because I'm not always very strong physically - most courses are five days a week for four weeks. It's also in Italy, which is where I would like to actually go to teach.

I do already teach - I'm a private tutor for children up to GCSE level, with a speciality in English and Maths - so I'm reasonably confident I can handle the course, if I get accepted, but for some reason the interview really scares me - does anyone have any tips or words of wisdom?

[Tdol]

Be prepared to answer any picky questions they might have about your pre-interview task. Good luck, don't worry and you should be able to walk it.

[Tullia]

Be prepared to answer any picky questions they might have about your pre-interview task. Good luck, don't worry and you should be able to walk it.

My pre-interview task was evil: most of the questions were "odd one out" and they did say at the top that some of the questions had more than one answer, and to just pick the one we thought most relevant - and of course I therefore spent hours trying to decide which answer to pick for all of them to impress the school more! I think on one question I came up with a reason any one of the four words could have been the "odd one out"

I also had to do a couple of short "essay" questions on "What makes a good teacher?" and "An example of when you have worked as part of a team" which while not difficult subjects in a lot of ways, become surprisingly hard to write about in 400 words. 400 words is not an "essay" it's a paragraph!

How formal is the interview likely to be? Will it be reasonably casual or will it be very serious? Should I expect to have multiple people on the call with me or is it likely to just be the one guy who e-mailed me?

[Tullia]

UPDATE (apologies for double post): We tried to do the call last night but our internet connection was so bad (storms, mobile internet) that we couldn't hear each other and gave up and have rescheduled for Sunday. I guess that's better but the delay is not helping my nerves!