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Pre Course

Here we go…

Friday, February 29th, 2008

Yesterday I got an email from Omar at Language Link giving me details of Monday - Day One!!

Turn up at 8.30. We will be able to order in lunch, which sounds ominously like there will be no time to even leave the building. Dress Code: No jeans, shorts, bare shoulders or midriffs.

Here we go!

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Somewhere to stay…

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

The CELTA course centre in Hanoi doesn’t help you out with finding or recommending accommodation. Fortunately Hanoi is full of hotels and guesthouses that don’t cost the earth so finding somewhere to stay is not really a problem.

The Old Quarter is definitely the most popular place to find a hotel. It’s the tourist centre of the city and every street it seems has at least a couple of hotels on it. I found somewhere to stay in the northern part of the Old Quarter, which now that I know the language school is in the southern part of the city, seems like it’s going to be a good walk every morning and night, but… the hotel owner is really friendly and the room I have is big for one person. I have free internet and breakfast and it feels very safe and secure. The going rate for budget guesthouses seems to be around the $10-15 mark.

The street around the corner from my hotel.
Hang Vai is the street for buying bamboo ladders.

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Hello Hanoi! First impressions

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

For all the sadness at leaving Korea, I can’t tell you how how happy I am to be out of the cold weather!! Although Hanoi at this time of year (Feb) isn’t entirely shorts and t-shirt weather, it is soooo much warmer than Bundang. When I arrived, the hotel owner was bundled up in jackets and scarves, complaining how cold it was, while I was feeling overdressed in jeans and a fleece. I’m always the first to complain about the cold, so that made a really refreshing change…

So, safely ensconced in a hotel in the old quarter of town; my new home for the next few weeks or so, I set out to explore…

The first thing that hits you (and you have to be careful to make that a non-literal expression) is the traffic . There are just so many people all out and about on the street at the same time. The roads are packed to bursting with motorcycles, bicyles, cyclos, taxis, cars, people. They truly seem to be the life and soul of Hanoi, everything happens on the street… Ground floor houses for the most part are converted into cafes, shop fronts and businesses. A short walk down the road will involve stepping in and out of the road as you try to dodge the mass of parked motorcycles, and the groups of people sociably gathered to talk, eat, or work on the pavements. Crossing the street takes a bit of nerve at first, but when in Rome… do as the Hanoians do and put your best foot forward. There seems to be a kind of give and take on both sides… if you hold your nerve and calmly keep walking, making it clear which direction you’re going in, the traffic accommodates you and neatly manages to swerve around you at the last moment. It helps that there are less cars than motorbikes, as swerving a car out of a pedestrian’s way is going to cause no end of trouble.

You definitely need to develop some kind of 360 degree owl rotating swivel neck to keep an eye on the road…

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Why Hanoi?

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I applied to do the course in Hanoi. When I was in Australia in 2006 I applied and was accepted onto the course at Latrobe University, but lack of numbers meant they had to postpone it, and my lack of visa meant I had to leave the country unable to take a later course.

I did think about doing the course while I was in Korea and heard that the British Council in Seoul ran it, but again my timing was bad. I popped in one day to enquire only to find out that they had just finished the One Course that they ran per year and would have to wait until the next year to do it.

Once I knew that I would be leaving Korea a whole new area of options opened up, one of them being Vietnam. You can do the course here in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh city. Same course, just run by different schools - Hanoi’s is through Language Link and International House run the one in HCMC. All the people I spoke to about this recommended Hanoi - not necessarily from experience of doing the course, but for the city.

Other factors came into play also, it was definitely cheaper to take the course here and Vietnam was a country in SE Asia I hadn’t visited yet.

Hanoi sounded like a fascinating place. An interesting mix of colonial French and Asian culture and history. Somewhere that you can get pho from a street stall and then sit in a European style cafe and eat French pastries.  No contest really…   How does it always end up being about food…!

Posted in Pre Course, Hanoi, Questions, CELTA, Blogroll | 2 Comments »

CELTA pre-interview task

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

The application form for the CELTA courses is about 10 pages long. Pretty much most of the training centres will be asking the same kind of questions, but obviously it does vary according to which centre you apply to.

The Hanoi application basically consisted of 9 “tasks” or sets of questions and essays, such as:

Look at the verb in bold in the following incorrect sentences. For each:
a) Correct the tense, using the same verb given.
b) Name the correct tense.
c) Say what the meaning of the correct tense is.

Example “I read a book at the moment.”

and

Explain the difference in meaning and/or usage of the following pairs of words, in language an Intermediate level student would be likely to understand.

Example: Skinny / Slim

and

Pieces of language can be categorised grammatically, and also functionally, i.e. according to the job they do. What are the functions of the language items below?

Examples:

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” An offer
“If only I hadn’t missed the bus.” Expressing regret

and

Think about your own experiences as a language learner, and/or your experiences of communicating with non-native speakers of English. What problems do you think learners are likely to have with the English language? Write at least 150 words in continuous prose. Your answer could comment on some of the following: grammar, vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Just to give you some idea.

It’s not really a test, in fact you are encouraged to use books to help you out. The difficult thing is not not knowing the answers or why a certain sentence is grammatically incorrect, it’s more really in how to express the answers coherently and working through the reasons for the grammar error or explanations as you would have to for language learners.

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