Introduction to the pre-initial training grammar course

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This section of the site is for anyone who is about to embark on a CELTA or other initial training course but for whom the grammar of English is something of a mystery (and, quite possibly, an intimidating one). That will normally include anyone educated in an English-speaking setting because the grammar of the language is rarely taught (or, if it is taught, rarely taught well).
If you have learned English by picking it up, rather than being formally taught the language, this section is also for you.

What follows will serve just as well if you are taking the only other proper initial course, that administered by Trinity College, the Trinity CertTESOL.
If you are taking another sort of unrecognised course, it will help but you are ill advised to take such a course at all.

Incidentally, you may find similar 'courses' to this one provided by people who want to take your money for them. Some of them may even be accurate, but why bother?

The menu on the left

The green menu on the left contains links to other parts of this site that you may find useful, now, during a course or after your course.
The menu appears on all pages in this section of the site.

This is where the links take you:

CELTA index: This will take you to the main index for all the guides specifically concerned with preparing for and following a CELTA course or any other initial-training programme in English Language Teaching.
Grammar for CELTA: This will return you to this page.
Language analysis: This will take you to the index page for a course in Language Analysis covering phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, clauses and sentences and discourse. It is much more thorough than this so you could leave it until after your course but if you have the time to follow even part of it, it will pay big dividends.
A simple grammar: This is written with learners of English in mind and is, therefore, quite straightforward. It covers more than this short introduction and is available as a PDF document to keep by your side. It may be helpful if you find yourself needing to explain grammar points simply and clearly to learners.
A basic ELT course: This is written for people who have had no formal training at all in teaching languages. It is not a replacement for a proper course, not least because you won't get a certificate at the end, but it will give you some language basics and a set of tools for working in the classroom.
Teacher training index: This is the overview page with links to all the guides on the site including CELTA, Delta and much more. During or after the course, you may like to start with the Initial plus guides which are designed for people just like you.
Courses on this site: This site contains short courses in a variety of areas for both learners and teachers. In particular, there is a course in how to transcribe (i.e., write down) the sounds of English. Sooner or later, you will have to learn how to do this. If you have the time, gaining at least a passive, reading knowledge of the phonemes of English will pay dividends on your course.
After your course, you may find some of the other mini-courses useful.
Worksheet task: This is a test that you can take at the end of doing these four sections. It comes with a key and will act as a reminder, some revision and a check that you have understood. The link opens in a new tab and you can make a note of your answers or print it out and work without a computer.
A-Z index: This is a long index where you can search for any areas that interest you. If, for example, you encounter an area of English Language Teaching on your course that you want to know more about or don't understand, use this index to see if there is a guide on this site. You can also search the whole site using the link at the foot of all pages.
A teacher's toolkit: This link, the last one, takes you to the index page of a sister course concerned with the essentials of teaching on an initial training course. It opens in a new tab.

Why do this first?

You may think that you will learn about English grammar during the course and don't need to prepare yourself because, after all, you are paying someone else to teach you about grammar and much else that you will need to start your English language teaching career.
A website dedicated to helping people on CELTA and other initial training courses (albeit written by someone who is not a teacher trainer and wants to sell you a book) goes so far as to say:

the CELTA is very much about ‘just-in-time learning’; you only have to learn the grammar point for your next teaching practice in detail.

and goes on to give some advice about what to say to learners who ask you something about grammar that you don't know, suggesting:

Remember that you can control and manage their learning, and part of that means staying focused on the learning objective you are teaching.

Apart from the fact that you can't teach a learning objective and you cannot control other people's learning, this is unambitious and fraught with perils. You can do better than that.

There are at least five things wrong with the view that you do not need to learn much about the grammar of the language before you begin a CELTA or other initial training course:

Initial training courses are usually very intensive with, typically, only about 120 hours of tuition (and often less).
There simply isn't time to cover all the grammar points you will need to know about on such courses so any language analysis work will be very selective. Often the selection is made with the demands of teaching practice in mind so the only grammar you may be taught will be limited and very partial.
The grammar of any language is an interdependent system of connected structures and forms. Grammar cannot sensibly be approached piecemeal as if weren't. It is for example, almost impossible to know how to teach the grammar of a simple sentence if you don't know what the parts of it are doing and that involves knowing about word class, case, and phrase structures.
Many tutors on initial training courses are, regrettably, not particularly well informed about the grammar of the language.
Often, this is because they do not feel that mastery of more than the basics of grammar is necessary or because they are not themselves confident of their knowledge of the subject. Such tutors are probably excellent sources of good classroom practices but less useful as a source of information about the language itself.
You are going to be very busy during a course and anything you can do now to take the load off your shoulders in terms of researching and reading about a complicated area will pay dividends later.
Getting to grips with grammatical systems and terminology now will mean you have more time and more confidence to focus on teaching rather than personal learning.
Learners are not predictable and nor are they particularly impressed by being told that the answer to a simple question will need to wait until you have had time to learn something about the subject you are teaching (see below).

Why should I learn about grammar?

There are a number of reasons:

Your students will expect you to know about the grammar of the language they are learning.
It is true that the focus in classrooms today is often less on the grammar of the language and more firmly on learning how to do things with the language (what is called a functional rather than a structural approach to teaching and learning).
However, it has long been recognised that formal, structural language knowledge is part of the ability to communicate effectively in any language. You may be an effective user of English but have little overt knowledge of the grammar of the language (which is why you are reading this), but when you come to teaching the language, you will need, in almost every lesson, to tell people something appropriate and reliable about the structures of English.
You will need to select and present language in a learnable way.
If you don't know about the grammar of English, you will be unable to do this properly and probably end up confusing your learners and making their lives even more difficult than they already are. That's not really forgivable.
It's part of your job.
Teaching is a practical skill but a skill based on nothing more than an intuition about language is liable to break down when you are confronted by the need to explain, develop and practise a specific language structure. If you don't know your tense from your aspect or your adverb from your preposition, life will be hard and uncomfortable and your students will soon lose confidence in you as a teacher.
Learners make mistakes.
That's obvious, of course, and, some say, an inevitable and useful part of the learning process.
Dealing with error in the classroom places immediate demands on you and responses such as
That's not really English
That's wrong and should be ...
and so on are rarely enough.
You need to be able to recognise what's wrong, correct it appropriately, or lead the learner to the correct answer, say why it's wrong and explain the system in terms that the learner can comprehend. To do that, you need to have a grasp of the grammar of the language and be able to select what the learner can handle at this stage as well as being confident in your ability to analyse the language.

Why this material?

Mostly because we have made an effort to ensure it is accurate and trustworthy. It is not comprehensive and does not, in the interests of clarity, include everything. As far as it goes, however, it is accurate.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many other sites which, despite perhaps being genuinely interested in helping people prepare for and pass an initial training course, appear to be written by people whose grasp of the grammar and structures of English is, to be generous, shaky.
On this site, you will find a guide to researching online and there is, indeed, an abundance of useful, accurate and informative websites which will help you to prepare and learn what you need to know for a CELTA course.
In that guide, you will find numerous examples of assertions on the web which are misleading, uninformative, obscure or plain wrong. Some of them are specifically aimed at people preparing for CELTA.

What is covered here?

This is not a complete course in language analysis. For that, you can go to a longer course which covers the essentials. The link to that is on the left (click on Language analysis) or you can access the index of the course here (new tab).
This section of the site is only concerned with the basics of English grammar with some tests and exercises to do as you go along and some ideas for how to tackle topics in the classroom.
It covers the basics but they are the essential basics without which you can't teach the language.

The guides in this section are just to get you started. Sooner rather than later, you will need to know a good deal more about grammar. Each guide comes with links at the end to help you learn more.
The sensible way to approach the guides is in the order they appear.
Here's the index:

Word and phrase class	You may have a memory of learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on at some time in your education. This guide will cover the basics and extend them a little.
Syntax	Syntax refers to how words and phrases combine to make clauses and sentences in English (and any other language).
Conjunction	This explains as simply as possible how we use linking between clauses to make longer thoughts and concepts.
Tense and aspect	This is an important area concerning the ways that English uses to talk about the past, present, the future and always.
An exemplified grammar glossary	This is a list of most of the main grammatical concepts which you are likely to encounter on an initial training course with links to more information.

Reference:
Beale, S, https: celtahelper.com [accessed 02/06/2020]
http://passthecelta.com/course-skills/parts-of-speech/ [accessed 07/08/2020]