I've posted close to nothing for several months, as I've been focusing my mental energies on work and study. On December 4, Jenna and I both took the Delta Module 1 Exam, following a several-month online course managed by International House that incorporated plenty of reading and several assessed practice assignments.
I believe I turned in a thoroughly mediocre performance on the actual exam. Not bad by any means, but mediocre. I fully expect to come away with a 'Pass', unadorned with a 'Merit' or 'Distinction'. To tell the truth, I am satisfied with this -- I know I learned a lot in the run-up to the test, and I don't need the additional fancy word on my certificate.
Overall the course was well-designed and worthwhile. It was the first serious online course I've ever taken and invested substantial time in (sorry, Coursera and Udacity), and it exposed me, even more than my CELTA course did, to English teaching as a serious discipline. Not to sound too hoity-toity elitist, but there are probably cram school teachers with twice my experience working in East Asia who haven't consciously thought about teaching to the extent this course forces you to.
I also appreciated the online forum as a means of communicating with fellow Distance Delta students, although I didn't make use of it nearly as often as Jenna did. (Come to think of it, I think 10% of course participants probably accounted for 90% of forum posts.)
I was disappointed as the course ended, as International House unceremoniously pulled the plug on the website just before we took the test on December 4. I understand the logic of shutting down the forum on test day. There's no sense in letting us East Asian candidates go online and screech 'Omigod omigod Paper 2 Task 4 is all about teaching pronunciation!!!' before candidates in Europe have even taken the test. But IH had been telling us for weeks the forum would be shuttered at midnight December 6, so I'd assumed it would go back online after test day had finished for us to spend a final few hours sharing reactions and commiserating with those feeling glum about their performance. But we got no such sense of closure.
The Good:
I learned a hell of a lot by studying for this test. My knowledge of English grammar is now stronger than it has been at any point in my life. In addition, I now have a much larger vocabulary of pedagogical terms than I did a couple of months ago. This is valuable not so much so that I can drop terms and impress fancy ESL people, but rather because it's carved out real estate in my brain which has been occupied by actual concrete concepts. In other words, knowing that a test can have 'face validity', 'content validity' and 'construct validity' is useful, but even more useful is having the concepts behind those terms fully developed in my head.
Additionally, it was very, very good for me to feel like I should go and become familiar with what the key commentators on the state of English-language teaching have to say -- people like Lewis, Krashen, Thornbury, etc. This is my job, it's what's earning me money, and what I've read just in the past few weeks has already noticeably affected my teaching in my IELTS prep classes.
And this is because I wanted to be prepared for what the actual test would throw at me. Paper Two, Task Four presents some issue in ESL teaching, such as contrasting two different approaches to class planning, or the value of teaching writing in a class environment, and asks us test-takers to comment on it. The way the test is marked, writing something stupid does not detract from your score (apart from taking up valuable time) but everything you write that's accepted earns you marks. So it's in your best interest to make as many points as you possibly can. Students are motivated to have a great deal to say on any topic they could potentially be asked about.
The Bad:
I have nothing bad to say about the online course that International House put together.
As for the test itself, I have to admit I am a bit unsure what I think of Paper Two, Tasks Two and Three. In these two tasks, you are presented with a series of exercises from a commercially published ESL coursebook. In Task 2a, you comment on the purpose of selected exercises, as they are meant to relate to the lesson as a whole. In Task 2b, you list at least six assumptions about language learning that you can discern behind the design of these exercises, and provide reasons for these assumptions.
In past exam reports, Cambridge complained that many candidates seem to be memorizing assumptions that were accepted in past exams and slotting them in where they seem appropriate. But the design of the task continues to encourage students to do just that. Most of the coursebook selections used in Task 2 seem broadly similar to each other: there's a reading or listening that students process in order to do tasks, then students' attention is called to the lesson's target language which the reading/listening text used in context, then students manipulate the target language in controlled and freer practice exercises/activities. (The June 2013 test, which we took as a mock, differed from this and used a lesson from a Business English textbook teaching presentation skills instead. But our December 2013 exam was back to the same familiar pattern.)
Additionally, the guideline answers published with each exam report tend to list the same sorts of assumptions in exam after exam. So can Cambridge really fault students for thinking, Hey, it's a presentation of language in context! I'm gonna pull out my 'grammar should be presented in context' assumption! It's a guided discovery exercise! I'm gonna use my 'guided discovery' assumption!
I did. And if previous guideline answers are any indication, I'm going to get marks.
There's also the fact -- and Jenna has much more to say about this -- that the reasoning behind what Cambridge does and does not include in its guideline answers is often opaque, to say the least, and to ace the test you basically have to learn to think like a Cambridge assessor.
Overall, though, I'm happy with the whole experience -- it's taught me a lot and has pushed me in a more professional direction. It's also pointed me in the direction of a decent-sized pile of reading material I would like to work my way through before I start to seriously think about Delta Module 2.
I believe I turned in a thoroughly mediocre performance on the actual exam. Not bad by any means, but mediocre. I fully expect to come away with a 'Pass', unadorned with a 'Merit' or 'Distinction'. To tell the truth, I am satisfied with this -- I know I learned a lot in the run-up to the test, and I don't need the additional fancy word on my certificate.
Overall the course was well-designed and worthwhile. It was the first serious online course I've ever taken and invested substantial time in (sorry, Coursera and Udacity), and it exposed me, even more than my CELTA course did, to English teaching as a serious discipline. Not to sound too hoity-toity elitist, but there are probably cram school teachers with twice my experience working in East Asia who haven't consciously thought about teaching to the extent this course forces you to.
I also appreciated the online forum as a means of communicating with fellow Distance Delta students, although I didn't make use of it nearly as often as Jenna did. (Come to think of it, I think 10% of course participants probably accounted for 90% of forum posts.)
I was disappointed as the course ended, as International House unceremoniously pulled the plug on the website just before we took the test on December 4. I understand the logic of shutting down the forum on test day. There's no sense in letting us East Asian candidates go online and screech 'Omigod omigod Paper 2 Task 4 is all about teaching pronunciation!!!' before candidates in Europe have even taken the test. But IH had been telling us for weeks the forum would be shuttered at midnight December 6, so I'd assumed it would go back online after test day had finished for us to spend a final few hours sharing reactions and commiserating with those feeling glum about their performance. But we got no such sense of closure.
The Good:
I learned a hell of a lot by studying for this test. My knowledge of English grammar is now stronger than it has been at any point in my life. In addition, I now have a much larger vocabulary of pedagogical terms than I did a couple of months ago. This is valuable not so much so that I can drop terms and impress fancy ESL people, but rather because it's carved out real estate in my brain which has been occupied by actual concrete concepts. In other words, knowing that a test can have 'face validity', 'content validity' and 'construct validity' is useful, but even more useful is having the concepts behind those terms fully developed in my head.
Additionally, it was very, very good for me to feel like I should go and become familiar with what the key commentators on the state of English-language teaching have to say -- people like Lewis, Krashen, Thornbury, etc. This is my job, it's what's earning me money, and what I've read just in the past few weeks has already noticeably affected my teaching in my IELTS prep classes.
And this is because I wanted to be prepared for what the actual test would throw at me. Paper Two, Task Four presents some issue in ESL teaching, such as contrasting two different approaches to class planning, or the value of teaching writing in a class environment, and asks us test-takers to comment on it. The way the test is marked, writing something stupid does not detract from your score (apart from taking up valuable time) but everything you write that's accepted earns you marks. So it's in your best interest to make as many points as you possibly can. Students are motivated to have a great deal to say on any topic they could potentially be asked about.
The Bad:
I have nothing bad to say about the online course that International House put together.
As for the test itself, I have to admit I am a bit unsure what I think of Paper Two, Tasks Two and Three. In these two tasks, you are presented with a series of exercises from a commercially published ESL coursebook. In Task 2a, you comment on the purpose of selected exercises, as they are meant to relate to the lesson as a whole. In Task 2b, you list at least six assumptions about language learning that you can discern behind the design of these exercises, and provide reasons for these assumptions.
In past exam reports, Cambridge complained that many candidates seem to be memorizing assumptions that were accepted in past exams and slotting them in where they seem appropriate. But the design of the task continues to encourage students to do just that. Most of the coursebook selections used in Task 2 seem broadly similar to each other: there's a reading or listening that students process in order to do tasks, then students' attention is called to the lesson's target language which the reading/listening text used in context, then students manipulate the target language in controlled and freer practice exercises/activities. (The June 2013 test, which we took as a mock, differed from this and used a lesson from a Business English textbook teaching presentation skills instead. But our December 2013 exam was back to the same familiar pattern.)
Additionally, the guideline answers published with each exam report tend to list the same sorts of assumptions in exam after exam. So can Cambridge really fault students for thinking, Hey, it's a presentation of language in context! I'm gonna pull out my 'grammar should be presented in context' assumption! It's a guided discovery exercise! I'm gonna use my 'guided discovery' assumption!
I did. And if previous guideline answers are any indication, I'm going to get marks.
There's also the fact -- and Jenna has much more to say about this -- that the reasoning behind what Cambridge does and does not include in its guideline answers is often opaque, to say the least, and to ace the test you basically have to learn to think like a Cambridge assessor.
Overall, though, I'm happy with the whole experience -- it's taught me a lot and has pushed me in a more professional direction. It's also pointed me in the direction of a decent-sized pile of reading material I would like to work my way through before I start to seriously think about Delta Module 2.
