A Step by Step Approach to Writing the Background Essays

Decide on a timetable for your work

i) Look at the deadline for sending your work in and write yourself a schedule so
that you allow yourself enough time for each stage.

Stick to it. There will be a temptation to keep reading, but it is much more
ii)
important not to fall behind!

Prime the pumps

See how much you already know. To get you started, try drawing another mind map
of the problems learners have with the area you have selected, how much you
already know about the area and some practical ideas for teaching it. As well as
establishing what you know, this process may reveal some gaps in your knowledge
and result in questions which can guide your reading.

Pose some questions
Formulate some questions about the topic that you wish to investigate. E.g. For your
LSA on grammar, depending on your chosen area, you might ask What are the
important areas of reported speech? How can you express obligation other than by
using modal auxiliaries? This process will help you decide how to focus your
reading.

Two or three heads are better than one! Talk to colleagues
As learners, a great deal of our understanding and assimilation of knowledge is
achieved by talking to people about a topic.

You will have experienced occasions when, after days of grappling with a problem in
your own head, you have had a short conversation with a colleague or friend and
suddenly all has become clear. Talking to people clarifies thinking and consolidates
learning. An excellent strategy is to get a less experienced colleague to ask you to
explain or summarise an issue or an idea. By doing this, you may well come to a
more coherent and systematic understanding of the issue yourself.

It is important to make sufficient reference to your own and others experiences and
to link your discussion of your experience to the aspect of skills or systems you are
investigating. Discussing with colleagues can help you achieve this in your
assignments.

As well as talking to people face to face, use the website Discussion Forums.
Colleagues and other course participants can be particularly helpful with regard to:

The problems that learners have in your chosen area of research. Here
knowledge of different learning contexts and different languages is invaluable.
Ask people to be as specific as possible. For example, if you are researching
passives, you could ask someone to translate a typical passive sentence from
another language; if you are writing about listening skills, you could ask them if
speakers of L1 in their context weaken syllables in the same way that we do in
English.

Practical teaching ideas and approaches. Again ask for specific ideas and
materials that have worked.



Read and re-read
Use some of the scanning skills you might have to select which books and articles
will be of relevance, particularly in the light of the questions you have posed to
yourself. Dont forget that you may get useful ideas from coursebooks and other
books designed for learners, from Teachers books and resource books as well as
from methodology books, articles in ELT journals and on the Internet.
Experiment

If you come across a new approach you havent used before, try it out on one of your
classes. You will then be able to write about the idea with more authority and
confidence. This is where you can really take advantage of doing the course over an
extended period.

Write a draft/outline

Draft an outline of your essay and ask Course Tutor about this on the consultation
forums. Aim to give a clear indication of the overall structure and organisation of the
essay together with reading references. It is advisable to write fuller drafts of
sections. The fuller they are, the clearer and more specific will be the feedback
comments you receive from your course tutor.

The most productive way you can ask for feedback is to post your outline which can
include a series of questions to ask the Course Tutor. This gives her/him a direction
when helping you to improve your work. The Course Tutor will also be able to
comment on the weighting of the assignment, for example, if it is too theoretical or if
you need to describe practical ideas in more detail.

Do make use of the Consultation Forum facility. Previous course participants have
found it invaluable and it is very obvious who has and has not sent in questions when
it comes to marking the final version of the assignment.

Write the final version

Delta assignments are a hybrid writing genre where you are expected to
sample the literature but also respond to it personally to illustrate your points
and demonstrate understanding.

Read the following advice, some of which has been taken from the Guidelines
for tutors and candidates from the Cambridge ESOL Delta Handbook.

i) General

Start with a contents page to help the reader see at a glance how you will be
organising your assignment. This is not included in the word count.

Then write a brief introduction which outlines the scope of your assignment and
the reasons you have decided to focus on it.

Give a heading to each section and sub-section of the essay. This will help you
to organise it logically and help your reader to follow your argument. Headings,
sub-headings, and where relevant, numberings and bullet points can all make it
easier for a reader to follow your line of thinking.

Give definitions of any potentially ambiguous or unusual terminology. For

example, if you have just read about some new terminology (e.g. anaphoric
referencing), you need to demonstrate to the tutor reading your assignment
that you know exactly what it means. Definitions are particularly important
when you are contrasting two aspects, e.g. deductive/inductive,
process/product, analytic/synthetic, top-down/bottom-up. Another reason for
providing a definition is that you will find that different writers often use these
terms in slightly different ways, so we need to know in what sense you are
using them. A good rule of thumb is to define any term that you think a
colleague in your school not currently taking a Delta course would have
problems in immediately understanding. Remember to also provide a
reference to the book or article where you read about the term. It is a good
idea to keep a card index of terms, definitions and references to save time
when writing.
 Footnotes are no longer permissible. All references and definitions must be in the
main body of your text.

NB: Whilst the majority of the essay will be in continuous prose, you can also use
bullet points, grids, time-lines and tables

In summary, you should:

1. refer to your own experience a great deal and feel happy using the word(s):
I; In my experience; I have found

2. Here is the advice from Cambridge ESOL on referring to your experience:

Your experience as a classroom practitioner is as valuable a resource as
the books you read but only if it is sensibly handled. You must include
reference to it (as well as that of others when you can) or this criterion
wont be met. In particular, however,

Beware of generalising too far from what you have encountered and
especially of stereotyping learners on the basis of the ones you have met,
whatever their language or cultural backgrounds.

Make sure you link your experience to your reading and research. Your
experience may lead you to doubt the received wisdom you read or it may
support it. Say which it does and why.

3. Where possible, avoid using hypothetical language to describe learners and
teaching. (The students would /should/ I would......). Talk about what you
actually do in your classes; what actually happens with learners. It is fine to
also describe activities that you have read about, but not yet tried out. In that
case describe what the teacher does to demonstrate familiarity or
understanding.

4. Refer to students in general and other nationalities (not just your students) to
show your breadth of knowledge

5. Avoid saying things like I have never taught this area of language/this level
before

In the Conclusion, aim to refer back to your analysis and link it with your
teaching ideas. Summarise the main issues and point forward to the Part 2 but
still keep it general rather than specific. e.g. It would seem, therefore, that a
logical approach to this language area/skill is to...........; I feel that X approach is
the ....most effective

In the Conclusion, you could usefully state what you feel you have learnt from
undertaking this assignment (in terms of the topic area) and how it will inform
your teaching

Remember, you can fail an assignment because of consistently careless

spelling or punctuation mistakes, clumsy or unclear phraseology or grammatical
slips. So proofread, or get one of your colleagues to read through your work if
you do not feel very confident (this is quite normal, especially if you have not
written an academic piece of work for some time)

Keep referring back to the Language Systems and Skills Assignments

Specifications to make sure you are satisfying all of the criteria


ii) The Analysis

Be careful not to restrict the analysis in the Background Essay to the specifics of your
lesson. They are two separate components, so you need to talk more generally in the
Background Essay.

If the chosen area is an aspect of language systems, then key issues of form and
meaning should be examined. If the chosen area is an aspect of language skills,
candidates will need to analyse the key process(es) and strategies involved in the
chosen aspect of the skill. When selecting points to examine, candidates should bear
in mind how they have narrowed the scope (see above) and should take care not to
go beyond this.

It is important that you demonstrate an understanding of the area. Terminology
should be defined (see above) in order that an understanding of the term is
demonstrated. Similarly, you should demonstrate an understanding of sources by
commenting on references made; a paragraph consisting entirely of a direct
quotation from a source, with no additional comment, does not provide evidence of
understanding. Express yourself as much through your own insights, experience and
common sense as through new theoretical perspectives. Be careful not to produce
an essay which is just a collection of quotes from other people. Yes, refer to your
reading and include quotes, but always offer your own commentary/evaluation of the
authors ideas.

Keep your analysis concise so you can go into sufficient depth within the word count.
Bullet points and use of tables will help. You should show your knowledge in this
area, but dont let it take over the assignment it is not a language-for-languages
sake assignment

Consider how best to organise this section and sequence the points which are made:
organising the analysis into logical sub-sections is an opportunity to demonstrate
understanding.

iii) Learners Problems

Refer to your own experience in different contexts, both as a teacher and as a
learner of different languages.

Refer also to problems you have discovered through the Discussion Forums,
through discussions with colleagues, and through your reading. Use reference
books. Grammar for English Language Teachers (Parrott, 2010) has very helpful
sections called Typical Difficulties for Learners. Practical English Usage

(Swan, 2005) often shows typical mistakes made by learners. Learner English
(Swan & Smith, 2001) takes several languages and compares them with English.
Teaching English Pronunciation (Kenworthy, 1987) looks at pronunciation
problems of different nationalities.



Dont forget you can also ask your learners directly.

Relate these problems closely to the theory and to the practical ideas. Indeed
many successful assignments are organised around learners problems, reasons
for these problems and ideas for helping with these problems.

If the essay has a systems focus, it may be relevant to consider problems with form,
meaning and pronunciation, and/or with awareness and production. In essays with
a skills focus, candidates should consider particular difficulties with applying the
chosen strategy, or problems with understanding or producing the text type, or typical
problems with the task type, etc as appropriate, depending on the choice of topic.

Consider a range of issues for learners, and learning contexts. (Note that contexts
here does not necessarily mean different geographical contexts. Different educational
backgrounds, different learning styles, different levels, different ages, different course
types [intensive <-> extensive] could all be considered different contexts).

Here is advice from Cambridge ESOL on focusing on the learner:

The criterion asks you to show an awareness of a range of learning and reaching
problems occurring in a range of learning contexts. This means you need focus
on particular issues for learners, taking into account such factors as language,
cultural background and learning style. This is not an exhaustive list so make
sure that, before addressing this section, you make a list of what the issues are
and then see what range you have. Simply focusing on, say, L1 problems is
unlikely to be enough.

You may decide it is relevant to suggest solutions to the problems in this section.
Alternatively, solutions could go into a separate section.



iv) Practical Ideas and teaching solutions

In this section, you need to outline and show familiarity with a range of relevant
procedures, techniques, resources and/or materials. (Do not include class-specific
comments and rationales for approaches and procedures comments here; these
belong in the commentary section of the lesson plan.)

Avoid getting side-tracked by overall approaches like PPP, TBL etc. These may be
worth a mention, but you need to focus more specifically on the area (language/skill)
you have chosen and explicitly link teaching ideas to the learner difficulties you have
discussed. You also need to show how the strategies are underpinned by theory.

Each suggestion (which may be drawn from personal experience, reading and
reflection or observation of colleagues) should be described in sufficient detail for the
reader to assess its suitability. In addition, you should state how the idea might be
used in classroom practice. It is not sufficient merely to list a number of resources. A
comment such as Visuals are useful for practising the present continuous is
insufficient; some description of the visuals is required, and the reader needs to know
how the candidate would make use of visuals.


In addition, you should comment on the value of each suggestion, i.e. state how it
helps, why it is particularly useful for the area in question. Taking the above Visuals
are useful for practising the present continuous example, you should state what it is
about such visuals that makes them particularly useful.

You should refer to a range of teaching ideas. For example, if you have chosen an
area of grammar, suggestions for teaching should not be limited to practice activities
but should also include ways of clarifying the language, helping with conceptual
difficulties, encouraging learners to notice the language etc.

You should also demonstrate how the teaching suggestions address points raised
under Analysis and issues. For example, if a teaching idea addresses a learner
problem noted earlier, this should be explicitly stated. It should be clear how the
points raised in this section relate to the analysis; for example, if an essay on an
aspect of listening skills has devoted a large part of the analysis to differences
between top-down and bottom-up processing, then frequent reference to this
distinction should be made when discussing classroom approaches.

Here is advice from Cambridge ESOL on linking practice and theory:

There should be some links here between the issues for learners you have
discussed and ways of tackling the issues. Dont just list a range of
unconnected approaches and materials that you have harvested from course
books. Show that you are familiar with them and that you can apply them
appropriately. Refer to things like level, needs, learning styles and so on to
evaluate the approaches.

As ever, consider how best to organise this section and sequence the points which
are made. We recommend the following framework for each solution

the aim of an approach/activity/technique

specific but succinct procedure

evaluation of its usefulness.

Here is a checklist of things to bear in mind when writing the background essay.
Some of these should be familiar to you from the work you did on the sample
assignment in the Pre Course Task.

Remember it is practical experience / examples / ideas that make you sound
convincing. Refer to what you do and why. As a rule of thumb, when you make a
point, back it up with an example.

Give sufficient detail in practical ideas; briefly describe an activity or approach

and give examples. For instance, if you mention the use of a text, say what it was
about; if you talk about contrasting two sentences from the text, write them out; if
you mention a time-line, draw it; if concept questions, write them; if a gap-fill
exercise, write out an example; if a problem with connected speech, write the
example out in phonemic script. Without this specificity, your ideas can come
across as vague or unconvincing.

Look at the good example below of a practical idea for helping learners write
emails. The division into Aim, Procedure and Comment allows evaluation rather
than simple description.






Writing dialogues

Aim to improve writing at speed, writing in a language that resembles
speech and fluency.

Procedure Learners complete a speaking task. For business students
this could be a typical telephone role-play, for example, to arrange a
meeting. They then write the dialogue using an email dialogue sheet
(Appendix 6). Learners pass the sheet back and forth as though they
were sending and receiving emails.

Comment This activity is communicative, authentic and enjoyable.
There is a real time pressure and practice is given in writing appropriate
text and subject lines too.

Here is another good example from an assignment on Collocation:

Exploiting newspapers/texts

Activities using authentic material such as newspapers or magazines
will expose learners to collocations in context. Select a text which is
suitable to the level of the class and rich in collocations. Choose a
collocation type to work on (e.g. verb-noun collocations such as launch
a campaign) and blank out one group of items (e.g. the verbs). Give
the learners the correct item and two false items to choose from (e.g.
commence/launch/set off a campaign). In pairs the learners discuss the
likely collocations. Finally, give the learners the original text to check
their answers. If done regularly, this type of mining authentic texts for
collocations along with helping learners to record the collocations in
their vocabulary books will help learners to notice collocations in their
everyday reading. Learners need particular support when the
collocations are separated by text, e.g. this campaign was initially, and
unsuccessfully, launched

In your practical ideas, aim to include activities and approaches you have tried
yourself. You can also refer to activities you have read about and comment on
published material. If you refer to published work, you can attach a copy of the
activity as an appendix but you must comment on it in some way, e.g. by
offering a description of its underlying principles, evaluating it, saying how you
used or adapted it, how effective it was. An assignment which consists of
unexplored appendices or just lists of activities with no evaluation or commentary
will not pass. An assignment which includes nothing from your own experience
would also be in great jeopardy.

Here is an example from an assignment on Discourse Markers referring to

published material:

Cutting Edge Intermediate (Cunningham and Moor, 2001, p.108 /
Appendix 1) has sections on spoken discourse markers, to show the
speakers attitude (obviously, surprisingly, naturally, etc). The
activities involve matching and a cued spoken stage. This exercise
introduces useful discourse markers in a structured way which allows
some opportunity for initial creativity. However it finishes at this fairly
controlled practice phase and does not allow any opportunity for
fluency. I have extended it by putting the adverbs on cards and
students tell chain stories in pairs, each picking up an adverb and
continuing the story using it.

Submitting Work

Try to finish the essay several days before the deadline for uploading (remember the
final background essay and lesson plan must both be uploaded before you teach the
lesson this is a strict Cambridge regulation). Check the number of words you have
used (do not include the contents page, bibliography or appendices in this) and then
write the word count on the front page of your LSA. Re-read it a couple of days
before the deadline.

Read the following advice from Cambridge ESOL Guidance for tutors and
candidates, which is a useful checklist when uploading your final version:

Essays must be word processed, [] using a program which will allow the insertion
of comments by markers, and submitted electronically as one document. []

All essays must include:

A cover page showing the title of the assignment, number of words used,
date of submission, candidate name and centre number

A contents page

A running footer should be inserted with candidate name and assignment title

Page numbering

All appendices

Edit your essay for:

content. Be ruthless about cutting out anything that is irrelevant.

length. Cambridge will not accept it if it is below 2,000 or over 2,500 words.

accuracy of grammar, syntax, spelling and punctuation. Remember that an

assignment can fail if it has not been proof-read properly.

style. Does it flow? Do paragraphs have a topic sentence? Are the sentences too
long and complicated to follow or too short and staccato? Will your writing
impose a strain on the reader? You may be able to persuade someone else to
read it and give you some honest feedback on this.


Uploading scanned documents. You will need to upload scanned documents to the
website e.g. your handwritten mock exams, sample coursebook materials. Please
note that the absolute maximum size for uploaded documents is 10MB. And it
should be only one single document.






What happens after?




Your Course Tutor will provide clear feedback on your assignment through in-text
comments and on the Cambridge Delta 5a report. Please take care to read these
comments as they are intended to help your future development, and to meet the
criteria of the Cambridge Delta scheme. They will also help you in subsequent
assignments, and in writing Part A (Reflection and Action) of the Professional
Development Assignment.


Your marked work will be uploaded to the website in electronic form, along with a
completed Cambridge Delta 5a assessment form. You will see the tutors
comments to the right of your page with a line to the highlighted word/ phrase/
section they are commenting on. If the comments do not appear at the side of your
work, you will need to reset your computer. Click on Show on the toolbar and then
Options... A dialogue box will appear and youll see a Balloons section. Either tick
Use balloons... or use the dropdown box to select Always, depending on the
version of Word you have. NB: In older versions, you do not have the balloons
option and will need to put the cursor over the highlighted words to read your Tutors
comments on screen.




Plagiarism

Whilst it can be useful to look at a sample assignment completed by another
candidate, you need to be very aware that there genuinely is no right way to do
these assignments. Delta participants have approached them from very many
different angles with different emphases. Markers are looking for your personal
perspective, for how you make sense of the reading and marry it with insights from
your own teaching and learning contexts. Indeed, you may find that reading another
persons work can have a limiting effect on what you as an individual can achieve by
working in your own way. You also do yourself no justice in terms of the process of
professional development if you are tempted to copy from a previous assignment,
and at the end of the course you are required to sign a formal statement to
Cambridge ESOL that the work is your own. Cambridge run thorough plagiarism
checks on Delta assignments, checking against previously submitted
assignments as well as material available in the public domain e.g. on the
internet. Anyone found plagiarising another candidates work will automatically be
disqualified. Cambridge ESOL define plagiarism thus:


copying another's language or ideas as if they were your own

unauthorized collusion

quoting directly without making it clear by standard referencing and the

use of quotation marks and / or layout (indented paragraphs, for example)
that you are doing so

using text downloaded from the internet without referencing the

source conventionally

closely paraphrasing a text

submitting work which has been undertaken wholly or in part by

someone else

(from Cambridge ESOL Guidance for tutors and candidates)



For further ideas on approaching essay writing see Chapter 7.5 in Studying at a
Distance.























The Bibliography and In-text referencing


You need to demonstrate in your assignment that you have read or consulted
relevant sources. This means that you need to provide a bibliography and
also include references in the text where appropriate.

The bibliography should be presented in alphabetical order of the authors
surname. Research reading sources should be in a separate section from practical
teaching materials.

You need to include the author, title, date of publication and publisher:

Books:

Willis, D and Willis, J 2007 Doing Task Based Teaching OUP

Articles:

Block, D. 2004 Globalization and Language Teaching ELTJ Vol 58/1 Jan 2004

An article in a collection of essays:

Oxford, R. L. 1999 Anxiety and the Language Learner: new insights in Arnold, J. (ed)
Affect in Language Learning Cambridge University Press

Articles from websites:

There are two ways you can reference sources from a website, as in the examples
below. Note that the website is in italics.

Either a) Paquette, G. 1999. Notes on English Composition.
http://www.interbiotec.com/biow/tip/archive/on.html(17.12.02)

The date in brackets is the date of retrieval from the website and not the date it
was published on the website.

Or b) Felix, U. 2001 The Impact of the Web on CALL-Parts 1-4. Retrieved August
15, 2001, from the World Wide Web http://historyofcall.tay.ac.uk



The bibliography should include only the reading you have specifically referred to
in the text. Do not include any text you have read but not explicitly referred to. Also
every source you mention in your assignment must be listed in the bibliography.
Remember that the reader of your assignment may want to check or consult the titles
you list.

In-text referencing: You also need to include references within the body of the text
itself. If you are generally referring to what someone has written, put the references in
brackets within the text to indicate the source: (Parrot, 2000). If you quote from an
author directly you, put the quote in quotation marks and include the page number in
your referencing (Willis & Willis, 2007, p.52). In either case remember also to put a
corresponding full reference in the bibliography. Please note Cambridge no longer
allows the use of footnotes in assignments under any circumstances.

If an author has published more than one book in the same year, you can distinguish
between works by using a), b), c) etc to let the reader know which one you are
referring to (e.g. Thornbury, 2004a).





Conclusion: Styles of Study and Learning

This section has attempted to introduce you to a variety of techniques and
approaches to studying in order for you to make the most economic and effective use
of your time and effort. Some of the ideas may have been new, others may have
been ones you have already used and / or rejected. What is important is that you
have had the opportunity to assess your own study skills, since you may not have
been in a study situation for several years, and now is probably the right time to
look at them again. The strategies you adopt this time may be the same as those you
adopted the last time you studied, or they may need to be adapted to meet the new
needs of the course and the different circumstances you find yourself in. In the end
your style of studying is personal to you and so you need to decide on the most
effective strategies for you.


further ideas on knowing yourself as a learner read Chapter 2 in Studying at a
For
Distance.
















































Reading


Essential Reading

Talbot, C. 2003 Studying at a Distance Open University Press

Additional Recommended Reading

Batstone, R. 1994 Product and Process: Grammar in the Second Language
Classroom in: Grammar and the Language Teacher Prentice Hall

Buzan, T. 1995 Use Your Head (revised edition) BBC

Bowen, T. Marks, J., 1994 Inside Teaching Heinemann

Lewis, M. 1986 The English Verb LTP

Nunan, D. 1991 Language Teaching Methodology Prentice Hall

Palmer, R. 1996 Brain Train (second edition) E & FN SPON

Skehan, P. 1994 Second Language Acquisition Strategies, Interlanguage
Development and Task-based Learning in Grammar and the Language Teacher
Prentice Hall

Thornbury, S. 1999 How To Teach Grammar Longman
Thornbury, S. 2001 Uncovering Grammar Heinemann Macmillan

Willis,
J. and Willis, J. (eds) 1996 Challenge and Change In Language Teaching
Heinemann

Ur P. 1996 A Course in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press
Dryden, G. & Vos, J. 1994 The Learning Revolution Accelerated Learning

Giles, K. & Hedge, N. 1994 The Managers Good Study Guide The Open University