Job Discussion Forums

[tina20]

Hi everyone!

I'm about to start my DELTA Module 3 course next month and I have opted for option 1: extending practice and ELT specialism. I might go for EAP or teaching YLs for my specialism...I'm still mulling it over.

My question is to those of you who've already been through this rigmarole: which specialization did you go for and why? Has anyone done option 2: ELT management? Is it really a value-add?

Would appreciate your thoughts!

[psychedelicacy]

I did teaching one-to-one.

To be absolutely frank, I chose that knowing that needs analysis and diagnostic tests would be significantly easier with just one learner as opposed to several, but it turned out to be very worthwhile and interesting.

[mmcmorrow]

Hi Tina,


I've been involved in teaching / assessing Delta for a while. I haven't had any experience with the Management option. It seems designed for senior teachers who are just dipping their toes into the management side (e.g. Assistant DOS etc). For a more complete management course, though, you might want to consider the Cambridge International Dip in Language Teaching Management, which is pretty highly regarded in language school circles, I believe [particularly UK etc]. I suppose the Delta Module 3 option would be a kind of taster.

For the ELT specialism, it's hard to say what would be the best choice for any particular teacher. The most popular ones (in my experience) seem to be Teaching Exam Classes, EAP, Teaching Younger Learners, Teaching one to one and Teaching English for Specific Purposes (in that order). I think teachers need to choose an area that interests them, in which they have some experience already and are expecting to go further into.

A few tips.

With the Exam Teaching option, teachers have to take some care to avoid just relying on past papers for all their assessment needs - it's difficult to demonstrate a real understanding of assessment issues by doing that and it can leave the learner(s) sidelined. The other risk in Exam Teaching, I think, is in relation to the course design. Unfortunately, a lot of exam teaching tends to be narrow, unimaginative, repetitive and generic, and it's the kind of thing many teachers struggle to break free of. But unless they do, it's difficult for them to show they've fulfilled the criteria for the course design - particularly if they've actually argued for learner-centred teaching and then served up a non-learner centred course design. Contradicting yourself is never a good idea.

With EAP, YL etc, it's important, I think, that there's a clear distinction between some general points that can be made about this context and these learners in general and those which are only really relevant for a particular segment. For example, with YLs, what's true and useful to know about 11-13 year old Asian girls may not be relevant for 7 - 8 year old Brazilian boys. So, it's important to 'hedge' any generalisations. The other thing about YLs is that it's necessary to be quite selective about what and how much general psychosocial child development theory is brought in. The assignment is about classroom English language teaching, so if Piaget, Bruner, Vygotsky etc are brought in, they need to be covered very concisely and in a way that's relevant to the language teaching context. What is needed is a critical examination of the real issues teachers need to address in whichever context is chosen.

So, for instance, with YLs, some of the major issues might include behaviour, engagement / motivation, parental expectations, the relationship of ELT to the child's mainstream schooling and assessment, appropriate resources and activities etc, while the issue of age of acquisition (which is a central focus of many university / MA in TESOL assignments) can be dealt with in a single sentence. The Delta is really a classroom-teaching focused programme.

With the Teaching One to One option, I think one potential challenge is the relative dearth of published resources. I mean, there are a few books and articles, but it's hardly a rich seam to mine, so teachers have to make the most of what there is. And like the other options, it's a question of dealing critically with the opportunities and limitations that this context brings to teachers and learners. I think teachers should consider how the learner can be centrally involved in decision making regarding every aspect of the course, how they are going to address the limitations of only having two people in the room - and avoiding burnout for themselves - and also how they can stimulate more effective out of class learning (since one to one tends to be intensive and occasional).

Anyway, those are a few thoughts. I've made other occasional postings about Delta on here, which you can look at if you want.

Martin McMorrow, Massey University, New Zealand