The Delta Module Two

Background assignments: general content

This document tells you what information to put in a background assignment (part one of a
systems or skills assignment) in order to meet criteria 2a-4c. Criteria 1a-1e are dealt with in the
Written Work Style Guide. Potential focuses, relevant sessions and useful reading are dealt with
in individual Assignment Guides.

You must upload the background assignment to the site before the tutor watches the
lesson and also hand them a hard copy when they arrive.

Assignments are marked against the criteria. The tutor has to mark whether you have met each
individual criterion or not in their report. It is therefore a good idea to look through these (you can
see them all together in the blank Delta5a on the admin page of the Moodle.

Choosing a Focus

You must have a balance of focuses. Across the four assignments you must have two
different systems and two different skills assignments. One skills assignment must be on an
aspect of a productive skill (speaking or writing) and the other must be on a receptive skill (reading
or listening).

Relevant criteria
2. Successful candidates demonstrate that they can effectively make clear the topic of the essay
by:
a. identifying for analysis a specific area of the grammar, lexis, phonology or discourse system
of English, or a skills area (listening, speaking, reading or writing)
b. defining the scope of the area they will analyse with reference to e.g. learners, teaching
approach, method, learning context, learner needs or text type
c. explaining with reference to classroom experience, reading and research why they have
chosen this area
d. making all parts of the essay relevant to the topic and coherent
e. following through in later parts of the essay on key issues identified in earlier parts.

IF YOU WRITE ABOUT A COMPLETE AREA, NOT AN ASPECT, THE BACKGROUND

ASSIGNMENT WILL FAIL !

Phonology is an area and so is listening. An assignment that is called phonology or listening and
which tries to cover the whole area, or which does not make it clear which aspect of the area is the
focus, will fail. In order to narrow the focus, choose an aspect of the area. You can narrow by
focusing on one part of the area e.g. not PHONOLOGY but WORD STRESS, or you can narrow by
sub skill or strategy e.g. not LISTENING but HELPING LEARNERS USE PREDICTION IN
LISTENING or you can narrow by specific situation e.g. INTONATION IN BUSINESS
PRESENTATIONS. If in doubt, ask on the forums.

When you are choosing the focus for the background assignment, you should also be thinking
about the lesson you will teach. How do they fit together ? The lesson will be just one part of the
background assignment focus. It might also have some elements of other things (though the bulk
of the lesson will be something that can be seen as the focus of the assignment). It is a good idea
to toggle between the background and the lesson (so choose a lesson aim, read and start writing
the background, sketch out a lesson procedure and at this point if you have time send a draft to
your tutor). Then finalise and fine tune both parts.

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Your assignment focus must be wide enough for you to write 2500 words about it, but narrow
enough for you to do so in reasonable depth. A narrower focus usually means you can achieve
more within the word limit. TENSES as an aspect of grammar, for example, would be too wide a
focus. The analysis section of the assignment will be 800 – 1000 words long and it is not possible
to give a useful analysis of the tenses of the English language so concisely. Even narrowing to
FUTURE TENSES would not help, as there are many different ways of talking about the future in
English and some of the differences between them are subtle, complex and difficult to describe.
However, narrowing down to only the going to future would leave you without enough to say. You
could narrow by specifying a couple of future forms, which would give you about the right amount
of ground to cover, or by specifying STRUCTURES USED FOR MAKING ARRANGEMENTS or
some other functional area which would effectively limit what you would be expected to include.

You need to choose something that can be analysed (rather than just listed), something that the
learners can understand and then apply to other similar situations. So in lexis for example you
could do phrasal verbs or collocations, but if you wanted to do a lexical set in the lesson you would
need to look at a couple of semantic relationships in the background (e.g. synonymy), not just the
set itself as that is not generative.
You must also be careful that what you choose is an aspect of a system or skill, not a resource
(such as readers or authentic texts) or an activity (such as role play or controlled practice).

Do the task. Actually make a note of your answers, then go to the end of this document and you
will find a task key.

TASK ONE

Which of the following look like appropriate focuses for background assignments ?
1. passives
2. project work
3. turn-taking in conversation
4. writing for business
5. irregular past forms
6. top-down approaches to reading
7. determiners
8. DVDs in the classroom
9. rhythm and sentence stress
10. fluency in speaking

There are more specific ideas about focuses that work for different areas in individual assignment
guides. If you are not sure, use the forums. Look back through forum posts by other people first
and if you can’t find any help there, post a question yourself. The word count is also a guide, in
that if you seem to have far too much or far too little information, this probably means you should
think about adjusting your focus.

Writing an Introduction

A clear introduction can help to show that you have met criteria 2a, b and c. You should say which
area you have chosen, which aspect of that area you intend to focus on and why you have
chosen this and you should do this very concisely – aim for about 100 words. Do not go over 200.

 Say what area your chosen aspect is part of. This might sound unnecessary and for some
topics it is. If you do an assignment on the passive then it is obviously an aspect of
grammar, but are link words an aspect of writing or an aspect of discourse ? There are

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 some topics which could be interpreted in different ways and for these it is particularly
important to make your intentions clear.

 Say why you have chosen this area. Make some connection with what you have noticed
your learners doing or what you believe they need. You may also want to mention how the
idea came up from reading and research. And why have you chosen to narrow your focus
in this way ?

 Don’t waste words saying that you will do an analysis, then issues, then approaches – this
will be obvious from your contents page.

TASK TWO
Write a comment about each of the following introductions. Are they good or could they be improved ?

INTRODUCTION ONE
This assignment will focus on developing learners’ ability to participate in discussions at higher levels.
Currently, I am teaching the four skills areas to a class of advanced learners who demonstrate a range of
ability in participating in a range of discussion types. While some learners are naturally good participators,
others, especially more reserved learners are perhaps not so willing or possibly unable to participate
effectively.
From my reading and research on the skill of speaking, I am interested in exploiting discussion in the
classroom and in particular developing my learners’ ability to participate more evenly and effectively as a
group.

INTRODUCTION TWO
I have chosen to investigate how to help low-level learners to use bottom-up processing strategies to
understand listening texts. It will also be necessary to refer to top-down processing as research suggests
that listening usually involves both processes.
I have decided to focus on bottom-up processing strategies because I have noticed how learners in my
current teaching context often express frustration when they are unable to process the sounds they hear into
meaningful chunks of language. As a result of reading around the area, I have realised that a more thorough
approach to the teaching of various aspects of listening is possible and that I could usefully supplement our
current course books.

INTRODUCTION THREE
When recently asked ‘Who has a mobile phone ?’, every student in my class replied in the affirmative.
Clearly, the telephone is an indispensable part of our daily lives. However to the language learner it
assumes an even greater role: alone in alien environment, it often becomes their primary link to the outside
world. Yet it is a tool that is often causes anxiety, especially for lower level learners, who often rely on
visual clues to assist in comprehension. Textbooks often treat it only in passing, failing to give full attention
to a major life skills area for students. While often used as a focus for speaking and lexis, the importance of
listening is often overlooked: therefore strategies for receiving information is the focus of this paper.

The body of the assignment

Think about the body of the assignment in terms of three sections.

1. The ANALYSIS in which you show you have read about and understand your focus by
giving a clear analysis of it. Don’t mention the learners or teaching in here.
2. The ISSUES in which you show that you are aware of the problems learners have with this
area.

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 3. The SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING in which you show that you have a good repertoire
of techniques and approaches to help learners work on your focus.

All three sections may be equal in length.

Approaches should never be less than 800 words long.
Issues is usually shorter than the other two sections.

In many assignments it is easy to keep the sections separate. If you break the individual sections
down into headed and numbered sub-sections, you can refer back and forth using the numbers,
making connections across your ideas. One advantage of this system is that you can see clearly
how much weight you have given to each section.

Sometimes people interleave issues and suggestions, though it is rarely helpful as there is not
usually a one to one match between the two things.

The Analysis Section

Relevant criterion
Successful candidates can effectively demonstrate an understanding of the specific area by:
3a analysing the specific area with accuracy, identifying key points

For most focuses you should say what is involved in using / doing this in English. If you are
doing a system (grammar, lexis, phonology, discourse) you should cover key issues of form and
meaning (and if needs be, phonology, different focuses will have more or less on these areas). If
the subject is the passive, what is the underlying knowledge base that a person has of the passive
(form, meaning/use and perhaps phonology) that allows them to use it appropriately (albeit
possibly unconsciously). If you have chosen an aspect of a skill you need to analyse the key
process(es) and strategies involved. If the subject is helping learners achieve greater fluency, then
in the analysis you would look at what fluency entails – how are people able to be fluent – choosing
to cover more of those areas that relate to the text or context you intend to use. The analysis is not
about students, it is about the aspect of the system or skill.
If you are teaching an exam class and want to work on the strategies necessary to do well in the
reading paper of IELTS for example, say how you or I would tackle the reading and the questions
(it still isn’t about the students at this point).
For more advice on content you should look at individual assignment guides (e.g. lexis or
listening). For more advice on terminology and referencing go back to the written work style
guide.

The Issues Section

Relevant criterion
Successful candidates can effectively demonstrate an understanding of the specific area by:
3b showing awareness of a range of learning and teaching problems occurring in a range of
learning contexts

In your issues section you need to present a range of problems that learners have with your
chosen focus. You can break this up in a variety of ways. If you have a systems focus it maybe
relevant to consider problems with form, meaning and pronunciation. If you are working on a skills
focus it might be particular difficulties with applying a chosen strategy, or problems with
understanding and producing the text type, or typical problems with the task type. A different
perspective could be to use sub headings of language, cultural background and learning style, but
in any of these cases the more variety of awareness you can show, the better. Effective
organisation and sub-heading of the section is another way that you can demonstrate
understanding of your area.

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This section and the next should have a strong flavour of your learners and your teaching. If you
say there is a problem, give examples directly from your classroom. For example, my learners
often have trouble with collocations because they haven’t noticed how widely Turkish and English
collocates can differ and L1 interference results in classics such as ‘I won the university exam’ and
‘He wins a lot of money in that job.’ Start noting down errors and if needs be, pick the brains of
colleagues in the teachers room.
When your learners are the subject make that clear. You don’t need to resort to a more impersonal
tone. It is appropriate to say ‘I ..’ or ‘My learners …’. Show awareness of a range of learning
contexts. If you have experience of teaching a variety of nationalities and can refer to the different
cultural problems or L1s, then do so. If you draw a contrast between English and another language
to explain L1 interference, check your ideas with a native speaker of that language. If you do not
have experience of a variety of contexts geographically, think about different educational
backgrounds, cultural differences, levels, ages or course types. And if you do not have personal
experience of these make sure that when you do your peer observations you go into institutions
that are different from your own. You can also use Swan and Smith Learner English and the MED
link on the Moodle to get ideas and examples from other L1s and cultures.

TASK THREE
The following extracts from issues sections are all good examples. The first four are from one assignment
and the next two are from another assignment (they are not complete issues sections, only extracts). Read
through them and then say what you thought the titles of the two assignments were.

A
1. Unfamiliarity with task genre: At early CAE level learners are familiar with the norms of a letter of
complaint for example, but they would have no idea what format a ‘competition entry’ takes. As a result they
would be uncertain of what the readers’ expectations are and may misinterpret its communicative function.

2. Incorrectly-used conjunctions. Even at this level, learners produce a sentence like: “It was raining.
Although I went to the beach.” They also use “on the other hand” as an addition linker due to L1
interference. For the same reason, so /so that, in the end / at the end, among others, are also problematic.

3. Failure to paragraph correctly: Even high-level Spanish learners occasionally include one-sentence
paragraphs as these are acceptable in Spanish. They also need constant reminding that a paragraph should
not contain multiple themes.

4. A lack of planning: with the emphasis in many of today’s classrooms being on oral communication, this
stage in the process is often assigned for homework, with little or no preparation. Many of my learners’
experience of formal letter writing is purely contrived, exam-based situations in which the necessity of basic
planning and organisational skills is not obvious; unless writing for real reasons with real consequences, my
learners have no inclination to plan effectively.

B
1. Cohesion The ideal model from the previous section is rarely produced, even by advanced students. A
learner in my current business class recently produced the following:-
“Sales are okay but recently they have gone down. This is because of the weather and the competition. I
think the weather has been very cold so people could not visit our shops. Also some people are going to other
shops because they are more modern.” The grammar below sentence level (within each sentence) is not
difficult. The problem is that students are less aware of grammar above sentence level (between different
sentences). Cook (1989, p 127) says that “Cohesion has often been neglected in language teaching, where
sentences have been created, manipulated and assessed in isolation. It has been assumed that student
difficulties arise primarily from lack of vocabulary or the complexity of grammatical structure at sentence
level, whereas difficulties can arise with cohesion.” Awareness of cohesion as a tool should be raised.

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2. Signalling: stress and intonation The emphasis via stress and intonation used to aid signalling is also a
problem for all levels of learners. When they are listening to good presentations it often goes unnoticed.
Only monotonous speech is noted. Learners from European cultures almost certainly use similar types of
stress in L1 (first language) situations. Once awareness is raised these learners should quickly transfer the
skill into L2. I have taught learners from Korea and Japan who have found this more problematic. The
business culture of these countries demands immediate respect to a presenter who will usually engage in a
monologue/lecture type presentation. Breaking through this cultural habit may prove challenging.

The Suggestions for Teaching Section

The Suggestions for Teaching section should be about how you help learners with this area. It
should be a very practical section and will describe activities (such as a game), resources and
materials (software, photocopiable activities, reading texts in course books), procedures and
techniques (exactly how you mix the groups or elicit words for emotions). There will be brief
mentions of theory that show specifically why these practical things will help your learners in this
area.

Relevant criteria
Successful candidates demonstrate that they can effectively draw on experience and research to:
4a outline and show familiarity with relevant key procedures, techniques, resource and /or
materials.
4b evaluate how the selected procedures, techniques, resources and / or materials might be used
effectively in classroom practice.

You should show that you have a good, practical, hands-on range of ideas that can help your
learners with the things that came up in issues and with this area in general. Some of your ideas
may be new activities that you have only just read about, but as far as possible, try bits of them out
so you can add comments about their execution / effectiveness that make the section feel like an
on-going experiment rather than (even if it is the case) a complete revelation. You may also want
to refer to things you have seen done in peer observations.

For each suggestion say what it is (Mill drill may actually be a universally understood term, but
what precisely – and concisely – do you mean by a board race game or crossover groups ? If it is
not absolutely obvious then explain or illustrate). You need to give enough detail for the reader to
understand whether or not it is appropriate for the area / level / learners you are writing about in the
assignment.
Don’t just list resources. If you say that visuals are useful for teaching the present continuous, you
must say what kind of visuals (name one or two of the things you want in the pictures) and how
you would use them (with what questions ? centrally ? for some kind of pair work ?). Describe
how you would implement activities, in groups of what size, give e.g.s of questions or prompts. If
you mention using reading texts that interest the learners, go on to say which subjects work well
with your learners or name a particularly good text in a course book (saying what it is about). Be
specific and give examples.

You should also say why it is particularly useful for the area in question. So continuing with the
visuals and the present continuous, why visuals ? What makes them particularly suitable for this
grammar presentation ?

You must refer to a range of teaching ideas. So for many focuses it is a good idea to break this
section up into awareness raising, more controlled and freer productive activities. Some areas

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also have a lot of recycling games. Try to mention different activities that are suitable for different
levels.

Relevant criterion
Successful candidates demonstrate that they can effectively draw on experience and research to:
4c demonstrate how the procedures, techniques, resources and / or materials address points raised
under ‘Analysis and issues’..

If you have made your reasons for choosing your focus clear in your introduction and they were
based firmly in your learners needs, then the various sections of the assignment should also
connect to the needs of the learner, enabling you to meet criteria 4c.

When you mention activities, you should make reference back to the issue(s) or the aspect of the
focus that they address. In this way you are overtly linking your classroom practice with the theory
that underlies it. Sometimes all you will do is show which issue or aspect is addressed, sometimes
you will add comments about how effectively it is addressed or other remarks to make the
connections stronger.

At the beginning of the approaches section, you may want to make some points about possible
approaches in general. Keep this short – the bulk of the approaches section should be practical,
not theoretical.

TASK FOUR
Bearing in mind all of the above, comment on the following extracts from approaches sections.

Extract A
Since reading about the Lexical Approach, I have found it useful to raise awareness of how language is
chunked while encouraging my learners to record vocabulary items within the phrase in which it was first
encountered which allows the learner to see other words with which it is associated. Very often these items
are not in the immediate proximity of the original item and thus by recording the phrase the student can get
a more complete picture of the target item. An example from one of my Intermediate student’s notebook
illustrates the point (see appendix 1).
Cutting Edge resource pack’s learner training materials also help to expose students to better ways
of recording collocations and Lewis suggests a box system into which collocates can be recorded according
to; the frequency or strength of collocation; how new the combination is to the student and how useful it is to
the student’s needs or interests. (10) I have found it more useful and motivating to get some of the more
resourceful students to share their ideas on notebook organisation with the class.

Extract B
Lower-Intermediate
In the past I have used Granger and Plumb (1993:79), where students must match the main verb with a
picture to the particle, with some success. Students like it because the pictures are interesting and
memorable and provide a clear, simple explanation of the PV. However, not all are PV’s; ‘listen to’, for
example, is a verb plus a dependent preposition. The exercise is quite easy, and students may be able to
recall having heard these expressions before. However, the activity lacks meaningful, personalised,
communicative use of the lexis, therefore, I often ask learners to make true, personally meaningful sentences
with the PV’s, tell them to a partner and explain the details behind them. This ensures that the learners are
using ‘cognitive depth’, ensuring that the word will be remembered (Thornbury 2003). I have also often
played a memory story game, where students in groups of four take turns in adding sentences with PV’s to a
story E.g.:
Student A “I woke up yesterday at 7am”.
Student B “I woke up yesterday at 7am and cleared away my futon”.
etc

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This works quite well, as repetition (Thornbury 2003) and integration with existing language helps to fix the
PV’s in their memories.
Addresses problems: 1, 5, 6, 7, 10

Extract C
Examples of advanced activities are:
 Understanding the nature of hyponymy
 Using cloze exercises to discern root words and affixes such as phobia, hyper, bio; geo .
 Deducing meaning and use of unfamiliar lexical items through understanding word formation
 Using word association games to increase automatic word recognition
Extract D
At lower levels, I use a stop-start activity. I tell learners about my weekend for example. They listen for
mistakes, and shout stop when they hear them. They then talk about their weekend and have a strong
incentive to be accurate since their partner stops them if they make a mistake.
At all levels, I get students to tape themselves and correct their mistakes. This activity enables over
ambitious, careless or lazy learners to see flaws in their language, motivating them to aspire to greater
accuracy/complexity.
At higher levels in particular, I find learners adept at identifying fossilised mistakes/oversimplification.
They listen to themselves identifying areas to improve and create their own assessment criteria. This
develops self-correction skills and learners respond quickly if I gesture or raise an eyebrow when they slip.
Over a period of time, it becomes more habitual to self-correct fossilized mistakes and use more complex
language.

The conclusion

Keep the conclusion very short – a maximum of 100 words. Don’t tell the reader what you have
said, this is an unnecessary use of words. Do tell them very briefly what you feel you have learnt or
achieved by doing the assignment.

TASK FIVE

To help you remember what you have read about try answering these questions without looking back.

1. If you write an assignment called ‘lexis’ is it likely to pass ?

2. What are the three ways you could narrow your focus ?
3. What are the five sections of any assignment ?
4. Of the three main sections, which one might be shorter than the other two ?
5. Which section is likely to have the most reference to reading in it ?
6. Which of the sections should never be shorter than the other two ?
7. What should you try to do for each issue ?
8. Will the teaching solutions section be more practical or more theoretical ?
9. How can you show that you have followed through on key issues in later parts of the essay?

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KEY TO TASK ONE

1, 3, 6, 9 and 10 could work as background assignments.

2 is an activity, not an aspect of the systems or skills of English.
8 is a resource, not an aspect of the systems or skills of English.
4 and 7 are too wide.
5 will just result in a list, not an analysis.

KEY TO TASK TWO

Introduction one is good in that the teacher is clearly focused on something specific that happens in their
classroom and that they want to deal with, but it is bit vague about the actual focus. The reasons for students
being unable to participate in discussions vary widely, especially at higher levels. In fact, the assignment
went on to talk about various conversational strategies such as interrupting, holding the floor and bringing in
others with a lesson focus on interrupting politely. The teacher could have made their intentions clearer from
the start, though this is a mild criticism not a major flaw.

Introduction two is clear and to the point. It specifies the aspect of the area (bottom up processing) and
makes reference to what sparked this interest. The teacher is also focused on what they want to achieve via
the assignment.

Introduction three is mixed. In one way it is ok as it is firmly centred on the needs of learners (though it
would be more effective to actually say that these learners are trying to survive in a second language
environment, rather than assuming that to be true of all learners) and that gives a likely focus, yet the last
sentence is muddled and does not make it explicit that the writer will go on to deal with listening strategies
that will help learners on the phone. It is also unnecessarily wordy – this could all be said more clearly and
concisely.

TASK THREE KEY

Extracts 1 – 4 are from an assignment called ‘Improving learners’ writing of formal transactional letters for
the CAE using the process genre approach.’

Extracts 5 and 6 are from an assignment called ‘Understanding and using specific aspects of cohesion in
business presentations.

Key to task four

Extract A is too general. It would be ok if the writer went on to illustrate these points, but they didn’t, they
moved on to new generalisations. How was learner awareness raised specifically ? The fact that collocations
are often not in close proximity is more of an issue than an approach. If it has already been raised, it would
be better to refer back to that than to repeat it here as referring back would show links across the sections of
the assignment. The illustration from a learner is good, but it should be in the main body of the assignment,
not in an appendix (though sometimes it is more sensible to just put a very small part into the main text and

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refer the reader to the rest in an appendix).
In the second part, examples are needed of Cutting Edge activities referred to and of Lewis’s box system,
though again it may be best to put in very short examples and append larger originals.

Extract B is better, though it still needs more illustration. The original assignment did have hard copy
examples of the pictures referred to and specific examples are given of items used in the activities. The chain
story game is well described, giving details such as suggested group size and target language examples. The
writer makes reference to some reading about how items may be better remembered, which was also touched
on in the analysis and the issues sections. It is good that the points have been brought up again here to show
how the activities fit as a practical realisation of the theory, but it would be even better to make this
connection overt, to say something about it The system used at the end to refer back to the issues section is
rather blunt, but does make an active link of sorts between the two.

In extract C the writer was trying to cover too much ground too fast. All of the examples given might be
valid, but without further illustration they don’t count for very much. How would one ensure that advanced
level learners understood the nature of hyponymy ? In what way can cloze be used to discern root words ? It
is possible that there are clear and well-founded answers to all of this, but the writer has not made it evident
that they know what they are.

Extract D uses a bold font to highlight links back to things already mentioned in issues, which is good. They
also illustrate with some examples. The first idea for work at lower levels is the best example of this. The
later points become rather more general. It would be better to include more about how own mistakes are
corrected and assessment criteria developed.

Task five answer key

1. You must NARROW YOUR FOCUS, so DO NOT WRITE AN ASSIGNMENT ENTITLED

LEXIS, GRAMMAR, DISCOURSE OR PHONOLOGY. A systems assignment must be on an
aspect of one of these, not on the whole system.
2. You can narrow your focus by looking at a PART OF THE SYSTEM, addressing the part of the
system that would be appropriate for a PARTICULAR LEVEL OF LEARNER or by looking at a
PARTICULAR SITUATION.
3. The five sections of any assignment are introduction, ANALYSIS, ISSUES, TEACHING
SOLUTIONS and conclusion.
4. ISSUES may be SHORTER than the other two sections.
5. The ANALYSIS is likely to have a considerable amount of reference to reading in it, the other two
sections will probably have much less.
6. APPROACHES should never be shorter than the other two sections.
7. For each ISSUE you should try to FIND EXAMPLES to give from YOUR LEARNERS.
8. The TEACHING SOLUTIONS section should be PRACTICAL not theoretical.
9. You can show that you have followed through in later parts of the essay by making connections
across the sections e.g. SAYING WHICH ISSUE AN ACTIVITY ADDRESSES

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