Question from a reader:
I’m after some advice. I can’t decide which professional development course to do. I have a CELTA plus five years’ teaching experience and I’ve been thinking for a while about doing a DELTA or Dip. Then again, I’ve heard that for university jobs like teaching pre-sessional courses it’s good to have an MA. But recently I’ve heard people mention the PGCEi as a future-proofing qualification and I’m like… aargh! Which course should I do?
My comments:
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Oh, come on! There’s no secret formula to getting a Distinction in the DipTESOL. You know that. I know that. But people are still gonna google ‘get a DipTESOL distinction’, and someone’s gonna top the search list. It might as well be me. After all, I’m not selling anything. And somehow, who knows, I keep fluking these good marks in courses despite being a bang average teacher…
So look, here are a few things I did on the way to that Distinction. Note, not to get a Distinction. They might help, they might not. Are they generic? Meh, not all of them… (more…)
I’ve been using PronPack a bit in class recently. I was going to review it, but I think it’s more interesting to write about how I’m using it instead.
I’ve just taught my teen classes the phonemic chart and we’ve been identifying some of the sounds they have difficulties with. Hancock’s Vowel Breakout (Book 2) was a good springboard for practice the other day. If you are unfamiliar, this is an activity where learners find their way out of a maze by following a path of words which include a certain sound.
I used this task as a quick review of our vowel focus the previous week, but I extended it by getting learners to make their own mazes for sounds they found difficult/problematic to produce or identify. (more…)
Someone asked on the ELT Planning Facebook page about model answers for Section 1 of the DipTESOL exam. I found one model answer here on this informative tesoldip blog. It doesn’t state the exact question asked, but you can infer that.
I like the structure that this blogger suggests for answering Section 1 questions: (more…)
Here’s my suggested reading list for the phonology component of the DipTESOL. I don’t want to mislead you – the course is 9 months long (depending) and you’ve a lot to do during that time. I’m not saying you should read all of them, but it’s worth getting hold of a few – particularly the classroom-focused ones. I shared a few articles in this recent post which might also be of interest.
Note: some affiliate links below. Views my own.
For the classroom
Star Buy: The Book of Pronunciation (Marks and Bowen)
I harp on about this so much – I really should be on commission. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere as my ‘if you only buy one book on pronunciation…’ so enough said. It’s very good. (more…)
I’m trying to persuade our DipTESOL students to engage with some pronunciation-related research. I’ve hand-picked these five articles for their relevance to our context (well, the last one is more general), and I’ll be sharing them with our candidates this week. Thought I’d chuck them on the blog as well, as others might be interested in them. I’ve left in the reasons why I’ve chosen them for the candidates here – you might find they connect similarly to your own context. (more…)
Apps like Quizlet are full of good study sets for the DipTESOL course. Check out what’s on offer by clicking here (including a list by Martin Cooke, who I know reads this blog).
Rather than add more to this, I thought I’d try a more (solely) game-based site. After all, there’s no harm in making revision fun! I’ve set about making some random Sporcle quizzes for DipTESOL trainees. Here are the links to what I’ve done so far – it’s a work in progress so I’ll keep adding if people find them useful. (more…)
I’ve had a few emails from people studying the DipTESOL saying that my old review quizzes have disappeared! Turns out that Qzzr is now a ‘paid for’ site. Boooo!
I’ve been working on alternatives. Here is a phonology review quiz I’ve made using PlayBuzz. Actually, the questions are copyright Marks and Bowen (2012), I’ve just chucked them in a more interesting format 🙂
(note: I only tried PlayBuzz after Svetlana at ELT-cation adapted one of my own posts into a PlayBuzz quiz… see here for that post.
I sometimes hear from DipTESOL trainees who are finding it hard to get to grips with phonology. Common problems include: (more…)
Uh-oh! Here comes a ‘Teacher Pete thinking something through out loud’ moment. Tut. I hate these…
Mark Hancock shared a good article on LinkedIn the other day called ‘Pronunciation Teaching Post-ELF’. It’s got me thinking about my own attitudes towards pronunciation and what features of pronunciation should be addressed in class.
According to Hancock, what we need to teach is pretty much established:
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