For Teachers
CELTA Experience: What the Four-Week Course Is Really Like
Executive summary: CELTA is Cambridge's introductory qualification for teaching English to adults. It asks for at least 120 hours with tutors, six hours of assessed teaching practice and four written assignments, and full time it usually fits into four or five weeks. Tamás Csáki took it in Hungary in August 2026 and called it "intense but transformative". This page prints his whole report, unedited, and sets each part of it beside what Cambridge's own syllabus says about the same part of the course.
Most CELTA reviews are either a training centre's advert or an anonymous forum thread. This one is neither. It is a short report by a named trainee, written a few weeks after he finished, and we have not polished it. We asked Tamás to write it because an account from somebody who has just come out of the course is more useful than another list of CELTA tips.
How to read this page. The quotations are Tamás's report, word for word: all five paragraphs, one per section. Everything else is our explanation. What a TP is, how CELTA is graded and what a CCQ looks like were all checked against Cambridge's CELTA syllabus and assessment guidelines (July 2024 edition) and its CELTA course pages, both read on 19 September 2026.
CELTA in One Table
Before the report, the official shape of the course. These are Cambridge's published figures, not a centre's.
| Question | Cambridge's answer |
|---|---|
| What does CELTA stand for? | Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages |
| What level is it? | Regulated by Ofqual at level 5 on England's Regulated Qualifications Framework |
| How many hours? | At least 120 contact hours with tutors, plus at least 80 hours of your own reading, research, assignments and lesson preparation |
| How much teaching? | 6 hours of assessed teaching practice with adult learners, at a minimum of two levels |
| How much watching? | 6 hours observing experienced teachers, 3 of which may be on video |
| Written work | 4 assignments, each 750–1,000 words |
| Grades | Pass A, Pass B, Pass or Fail |
| How long does it take? | Full time, usually 4–5 weeks; part time, from a few months to a year |
| Formats | Face-to-face, online or blended |
| Who can apply? | Aged 18 or over, educated to the standard for entry into higher education, with English at high C1 or above |
| Where? | More than 280 centres around the world |
Two things in that table surprise people. First, the six assessed hours are the whole of the teaching you are graded on. Cambridge fixes that total and leaves the number and length of the lessons to each centre, as long as at least two of them run for 40 minutes or more. Second, the 80 hours of self-study are a floor, not an estimate. Put 200 hours into four weeks and you are working about 50 hours a week.
The Four Weeks at a Glance
- 4 weeksfull time
- 8teaching practices
- B1 + B2learner groups
- 3–28 Aug2026
"I recently completed my CELTA programme, which ran from the 3rd to the 28th of August, and my overall impression of the course has been highly positive. The intensive four-week schedule provided a rigorous but incredibly rewarding environment to develop my teaching methodology." — Tamás Csáki
Monday 3 August to Friday 28 August 2026 is twenty working days. That is the shortest full-time shape Cambridge describes, and it explains the two words Tamás chose: intensive and rigorous. On a four-week course there is no quiet week. Input sessions, planning, teaching, feedback and written assignments run side by side.
Teaching Practice: Eight Lessons With B1 and B2 Learners
"At the core of the experience were the eight Teaching Practices (TPs), divided into two-week blocks where we taught B1 and B2 level students. Navigating these TPs required thorough preparation, which involved submitting detailed lesson plans to the trainers and designing engaging handout materials for the students. I chose to deliver my presentations using PowerPoint, which helped structure my lessons effectively—a particular highlight being a B1 vocabulary lesson I designed around The Sims to teach target adjectives." — Tamás Csáki
Teaching practice (TP) is the part of CELTA that everything else serves. You teach a real group of learners, usually a class the centre has arranged for the purpose, while a trainer observes and your fellow trainees watch. Cambridge sets six assessed hours in total and leaves the number of lessons to the centre. On Tamás's course, teaching practice came as eight TPs, in two blocks of two weeks, with B1 and B2 groups.
If the levels are new to you, our pages on B1 and B2 describe what learners at each level can already do. That is exactly the question a TP plan starts from: what can this group do today, and what is the one step forward this lesson adds?
What goes into a CELTA lesson plan
"Detailed lesson plans" is not an exaggeration. The syllabus lists what a plan has to show:
- a statement of aims
- a class profile
- the difficulties you expect, with solutions
- how teacher and learners will interact
- the resources you will use
- the stages of the lesson, with timings
Add the handouts and, in Tamás's case, the slides, and a single TP can take far longer to prepare than to teach.
Why The Sims was a good idea
A vocabulary lesson on adjectives can die in five minutes if the adjectives float free of any context. Tamás tied his to a game many learners already know, full of characters whose personalities can be described. The context gives the words a job, and it gives learners something they want to talk about. Here is one way a lesson like that can be staged. It is our sketch, not his plan.
| Stage | What happens | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Lead-in | Show a character and ask learners to describe them | "What kind of person is she?" |
| Meaning | Meet the target adjectives in context | outgoing, stubborn, moody, creative |
| Checking | Short questions test the meaning (CCQs, below) | "Does a stubborn person change their mind easily?" |
| Pronunciation | Mark the stress and model it | outGOing, STUBborn, creAtive |
| Controlled practice | Match adjectives to short descriptions | a handout, or a slide |
| Freer practice | Learners design a character and describe it to a partner | pair work, then feedback |
The adjectives in that table all come from our B1 personality and character word list, which is a quick source of target language if you are planning a similar lesson.
The Support: Preparation Sessions, Peers and Feedback
"The support system throughout the course was excellent. Following our teaching blocks, we had Assisted Language Preparation sessions where the CELTA trainers offered invaluable guidance to help us prepare for upcoming classes. Collaborating with and observing my teaching practice peers was also instrumental in refining my classroom approach." — Tamás Csáki
This support is built into the course rather than a bonus. Cambridge counts supervised lesson planning, feedback on teaching and peer observation inside the 120 contact hours. In practice, the other trainees in your TP group are part of your training. You watch their lessons, they watch yours, and the syllabus even assesses how constructively you work with colleagues when planning teaching practice.
Watching a peer is most useful when you go in with a question. Pick one thing per lesson:
- How long did the instructions take, and did the learners know what to do afterwards?
- Which stage ran over time, and why?
- Which checking questions actually showed the teacher something?
- When did the learners speak most, and what made that happen?
Write down what you saw, not what you thought of it. Those notes feed straight into the reflection the course asks of you.
Input Sessions: Skills Lessons and Language Lessons
"Beyond the practical teaching, the input sessions provided clear, actionable strategies on how to teach both skills and language lessons effectively. Applying these theories allowed me to critically evaluate my own performance, particularly when reflecting on areas like classroom management, refining my concept checking questions (CCQs), and clarifying phonology for the learners." — Tamás Csáki
Input sessions are the taught part of CELTA: the trainers' sessions on how to teach, which count toward the 120 contact hours. The split Tamás mentions, skills lessons and language lessons, runs through the whole syllabus.
| Lesson type | What it develops | Example aim |
|---|---|---|
| Skills lesson | Reading, listening, speaking or writing | Learners can pick out the main points of a short radio interview |
| Language lesson | Grammar, vocabulary, functional language and pronunciation | Learners can use used to to talk about past habits |
In a skills lesson the text or task is the centre of the lesson, and new language is only a tool. In a language lesson the new language is the centre, and the text is only a way in. Blurring the two is an easy way to end up with an unclear aim, so knowing which kind of lesson you are teaching is half of writing a clear one.
What He Reflected On: Management, CCQs and Phonology
Tamás names three areas he kept working on. All three can be practised before your first TP, and all three are worth a line in every lesson plan.
Classroom management
The syllabus asks trainees to arrange the room to suit the lesson and to set up whole-class, pair and group work. Most of that comes down to instructions. Keep them short, show the task rather than describe it, and check that people understood before they start. "Are you writing or speaking?" and "Alone or with a partner?" are instruction-checking questions (ICQs). They take five seconds and save five minutes.
Concept checking questions (CCQs)
A CCQ checks that learners understand the meaning of new language, without asking "Do you understand?", which rarely gets an honest "no". Good CCQs are short, easy to answer, and do not use the new word in the question.
For stubborn:
- "Does a stubborn person change their mind easily?" — No.
- "If you give a stubborn person a good reason, will they agree quickly?" — Probably not.
For used to ("She used to live in Budapest"):
- "Does she live in Budapest now?" — No.
- "Did she live there for some time?" — Yes.
"Refining" them, in Tamás's word, often means cutting. A first draft of CCQs tends to be too long, or asks something the learners cannot answer with the language they have. If you want to see used to laid out for a B1 group, our past tenses and used to page is a useful reference.
Clarifying phonology
Phonology is how the new language sounds: word stress, individual sounds and the way words join in speech. In a vocabulary lesson that often means marking the stress on the board and drilling it. Stress is not always where learners expect it. Outgoing is stressed on go, creative on a, and stubborn has a weak second syllable. Our word stress guide sets out the common patterns if you want to check a word before you teach it.
Is CELTA Hard?
Tamás's answer is in his own words: "rigorous", "intensive", "intense". The official answer is in the grading rules. To earn a grade, your performance by the end of the course has to match all of the descriptors for that grade. If it does not match all of the Pass descriptors, the result is a Fail. Your centre grades your teaching and assignments, and an assessor approved by Cambridge English moderates the grades for the whole course.
One clear difference between the three passing grades is how much help you still need. The syllabus puts it like this for planning:
| Grade | Planning, in the syllabus's words |
|---|---|
| Pass | "Candidates can plan effectively with guidance." |
| Pass B | "Candidates can plan effectively with some guidance." |
| Pass A | "Candidates can plan effectively with minimal guidance." |
Cambridge's CELTA pages publish no pass rate, so neither do we. What makes the course hard is less any single task than the pile-up: a lesson to plan, a lesson to teach, feedback to absorb and an assignment due, often in the same week.
Is CELTA Worth It?
It depends on what you want it to do. Cambridge describes CELTA as an introductory course for people with little or no teaching experience, or with some experience but little training. It is built around teaching adults: your assessed teaching practice is with adult learners. Cambridge calls it the most widely recognised English teaching qualification in the world.
It is not a degree. Ofqual places CELTA at level 5, and a bachelor's degree sits at level 6. It is a practical certificate that says you have been trained, observed and assessed while teaching real learners.
"Overall, the programme was an intense but transformative experience that has significantly strengthened my confidence and capabilities in the classroom." — Tamás Csáki
Cost is the other half of the question, and Cambridge does not publish a single price. Each centre sets its own fee, so it varies by country and by format. Compare the fees on at least two centres' own pages, and ask each what is included, before you decide.
CELTA for Non-Native Speakers
Tamás is Hungarian and took his course in Hungary. CELTA is not only for native speakers of English: Cambridge lists first-language and non-first-language speakers among the people the course is for. What it asks for is English at high C1 or above, good enough to teach at a range of levels.
If you are not sure what that means in practice, our page on the C1 level describes what a C1 user can do, and the C2 page describes the level above. Centres judge your English themselves when you apply, and nothing on this site replaces that. For a rough starting point before you apply, our free English level test gives an estimate in about twelve minutes.
What His Report Suggests for Your Own CELTA
These are our conclusions from Tamás's report, not rules from Cambridge.
- Plan earlier than feels necessary
His TPs "required thorough preparation": a detailed plan for the trainers and handouts for the learners. Start the plan the day the TP is assigned.
- Give the language a context the learners care about
The lesson he singled out as a highlight was built around a game his learners could talk about. Choose the context first, then the words.
- Use every preparation session
He calls the trainers' guidance "invaluable". Bring a draft plan and specific questions, not a blank page.
- Watch your peers with one question in mind
Instructions, timing, CCQs or learner talk. One focus per lesson gives you notes you can use.
- Write your CCQs into the plan
Script them, then cut them. A question invented mid-lesson tends to run long.
- Check the pronunciation before you teach
Mark the stress on every target word in your plan, so you model it the same way every time.
- Reflect in writing after every TP
One of the four assignments, Lessons from the classroom, asks for exactly this kind of reflection.
Free Material for Your Teaching Practice
We do not run CELTA courses, and we are not a CELTA centre. What we do publish, free and with no account needed, is material a trainee may find useful during the four weeks:
- Free printable worksheets: 90 PDF worksheets, A1 to B2, each with an answer key.
- B1 exercises and B2 exercises: every grammar topic at those levels, with 60 exercises per topic.
- B1 collocations: word partners to build a vocabulary lesson around.
- Pronunciation guides: word stress, minimal pairs, silent letters and an IPA chart.
- ESL teaching resources: our guide to setting interactive homework once you are teaching.
Frequently Asked Questions About CELTA
What is CELTA?
CELTA is the Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, an introductory teaching qualification from Cambridge English. It covers at least 120 hours with tutors, six hours of assessed teaching practice with adult learners and four written assignments. Ofqual regulates it at level 5.
How long is a CELTA course?
Full time, a CELTA course usually runs over four to five weeks. Part time, it can take from a few months to a year. Tamás's full-time course ran for four weeks, from 3 to 28 August 2026.
How many hours of teaching practice are there on CELTA?
Every trainee teaches six assessed hours, with adult learners at a minimum of two levels. Each centre decides how to divide the hours into lessons. On Tamás's course, teaching practice came as eight TPs with B1 and B2 groups.
Is CELTA hard to pass?
It is demanding rather than tricky. You must meet all of the descriptors for a grade to earn it, and the minimum workload is about 200 hours, which is roughly 50 hours a week on a four-week course. Cambridge's CELTA pages do not publish a pass rate.
What do Pass A and Pass B mean on CELTA?
There are three passing grades: Pass, Pass B and Pass A. One clear difference between them is independence. At Pass a trainee plans effectively with guidance, at Pass B with some guidance, and at Pass A with minimal guidance. Performance that does not meet all of the Pass descriptors is a Fail.
Can non-native speakers do CELTA?
Yes. Cambridge lists non-first-language speakers among the people CELTA is for. The requirement is English at high C1 or above, good enough to teach at a range of levels.
What are CCQs on CELTA?
CCQs are concept checking questions: short questions that check whether learners understood the meaning of new language, without using the new word. For "stubborn", one CCQ is "Does a stubborn person change their mind easily?", and the answer is no.
Is CELTA equivalent to a degree?
No. Ofqual places CELTA at level 5 on England's Regulated Qualifications Framework, and a bachelor's degree sits at level 6. CELTA is a practical teaching certificate, not an academic degree.
How much does CELTA cost?
Cambridge does not publish a single price for CELTA. Each centre sets its own fee, so the cost varies by country and by format. Compare the fees on the centres' own pages and ask what each one includes.