I read a colossal amount both in the run up to and during my Delta course at Leeds Met, so have decided to blog about (some of!) what I read in that time, for prospective Delta students (and any other teachers interested in ELT-related literature!) to use as a point of comparison for their own reading, and even – perhaps – find a couple of things they haven’t read as yet, which might be of interest. It’s not an exhaustive list because if I were to list everything I read and used in preparation for and during the Delta, then this post would be as overwhelming and therefore as limited in utility as the official recommended reading lists!
I’ve divided up the books/articles up by module (and in the case of Module 2 sub-divided further) in the hopes of making the list a bit less unwieldy. There’s some overlap, inevitably, especially for module 1, so will cross-reference where relevant. All books are linked to Amazon, where you can have a sneak preview of many of them, but do be selective in what you buy. (One of the good things about doing the course at Leeds Met was having access to the library, which has all the essential books and many others besides!) Try to beg/borrow/maybe not steal first!
So, here goes, in no particular order:
Module 1
For the exam, a lot of general reading is helpful. And if you start well in advance of doing a course (if you plan to do a course for this module), it gives you time to absorb what you are reading and get repeated exposure to terminology in context. This is helpful for Paper 1, questions 1 and 2, but also just in giving you a sound basis of theory to draw in throughout the Delta and beyond.
This book by Scott Thornbury is very useful for making sure you know the English Language inside out – what everything is called and, importantly, how it works. It contains information and exercises, with a handy key at the back of the book. I worked through the whole of this book in preparation for starting the Delta – doing the exercises, checking the key and then filling in any gaps in a different colour font to remind me of where my gaps were when using the document as a revision tool. (I wouldn’t have had time to do this alongside doing the Delta, so this is definitely something I recommend doing in advance of starting!)
Beyond the sentence (also LSA2)
Another Scott Thornbury special, this looks at English from a discourse perspective. It’s really interesting, clearly and accessibly written, and in more mundane terms very useful for Paper 1 question 4, which carries a lot of marks. Also, of course, recommended for if you do an LSA on Discourse, of course! In fact, I used it for my LSAs on Listening and Speaking as well, language as discourse being such a central part of what language is and how it works. Another mixture of theory and tasks with key, enabling you to test what you’ve learned and then check your understanding. I made a lot of notes based on this book prior to starting, which were useful to refer back to during the course. Of course it also gives you exposure to more useful terminology in action (a lot of which was new to me, words and concepts both, hence the copious notes!).
Sound Foundations (also LSA3 and PDA)
This I read after I decided I wanted to do the Delta, quite far in advance of actually doing it. Someone had mentioned that it was important to learn about phonology before doing the Delta and of course whoever it was (I forget now but thank you very much to you!) was absolutely right.
Underhill helps you to understand phonology through a mixture of theory and practical discovery activities that guide you through the phonemic chart, the way all the sounds work, as well as word level and sentence level phonological features, and how everything fits together. He also provides plenty of suggestions for classroom use, as an added bonus. Indeed, this is another very clear, accessible read – and the latest edition features a helpful accompanying CD. You might as well get friendly with phonology before starting the Delta, it will be useful for Paper 1 question 4 and also for your LSA lesson plans, for the target language analysis part.
I found that understanding how phonology works at sound level made it a lot easier to learn the phonemes/how to write in phonemic script, which, geekily enough, I quite enjoy doing having learnt how! (Soon after completing my CELTA I tried to learn them just through memorisation and it just didn’t stick.)
This is a useful overview of Language Acquisition theory, by Lightbown and Spada, exploring both first and second language acquisition theories as well as how they apply to the classroom. I read it cover to cover in advance of the course, again making copious notes because most of it was new to me, and found it useful to consequently have a bit of background knowledge to draw on in this area.
Yet another Thornbury gem, this is a useful starting point whenever you come across something you aren’t sure of. I don’t recommend reading it cover to cover – too much information on too many different things. Rather keep dipping in and out, use it as a reference when you get confused about stuff, and use it as a revision tool: open it a random, pick a term, try to define it then look at how Thornbury defines it. Repeat.
The Practice of English Language Teaching
I imagine most teachers have come across this one of Harmer’s. My CELTA tutor recommended it to me when I asked for suggestions of what to read beyond the course (our general methodology text was Scrivener’s Learning Teaching). So I had it and I had dipped in and out. But once I had been accepted on the course, I dutifully ploughed through it, which was good for checking what I knew, remembered, had forgotten and didn’t yet know. It’s a useful book for giving you a bit of information about all sorts.
Thinking about Language Teaching
This book of Michael Swan’s is one I bought at the IATEFL conference in 2012 (got it signed by Michael Swan too! :-p) because it looked interesting: It’s a collection of articles he’s written over the ages and as such provides a fascinating insight into the development of ELT over the past few decades. As well as being interesting, it turned out to be a useful one for Delta too. There are a lot of arguments for and against various approaches and having an understanding of these doesn’t go amiss. You may pick up titbits of information that come in handy for Paper 2 question 4, for example. Plus he writes really well!
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching
Richards and Rodgers’ take on the many different approaches and methods that have come in and out of fashion over the years is a very useful overview. I read this before doing the course too, and made a timeline summarising the information. I found this helped me get my head around it all, as well as creating a useful document to refer back to during the course.
And, finally, here is a list of resources I put together especially for revising for the Delta Module 1 exams.
Module 2
Obviously, what’s useful depends on what your focus is for each of the 4 LSAs. If you happen to plan on doing Lexis, Listening, Phonology and Speaking, then you’re in luck! :-p There are a couple of books that are useful generally too.
General
Learner English: a teacher’s guide to interference and other problems
This book, by Swan and Smith, is useful regardless of the focuses you choose for your LSAs: It outlines the problems (grammatical, phonological etc) that learners from different countries have with speaking English, relating these back to the L1. I bought it before going to teach in Indonesia – happened across it in a bookshop and got it because it looked interesting and useful: I wasn’t wrong!
Classroom Management Techniques
(See PDA/Experimental Practice)
LSA1 (Lexis)
The classic read if you are doing a Lexis LSA. However, if you are short of time, rather than reading this cover to cover, start with Implementing the Lexical Approach, which condenses the theory and provides lots of ideas for practical application. Then use the Lexical Approach to plug any gaps. If you are planning to do a Lexis LSA and you know this before you start your course, though, the Lexical Approach would be a good one to include in your pre-course reading. I think a lot more can be got out of it, because there is so, so much in it, if you have that bit of extra time to absorb things, i.e. without an impending LSA draft deadline looming.
This is useful, funnily enough, if you decide, as I did, to focus on collocations (of some sort – you’d need to narrow it in some way e.g. I narrowed mine down to verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations for lower level learners) for your Lexis LSA.
This I read prior to doing the course, as part of my preparation and I found it gave me a lot of useful background information, a good overview of lexis, which meant that when it came the first LSA, which for us happened to be Lexis, I was in a good position to chose what I wanted to focus on and get down to work, which in turn meant I was able to make better use of the draft-feedback system at Leeds Met, meaning that by the end of LSA1 I had a handle on exactly what was required (which was no small feat, as I was miles off to start with!) for each of the components.
Thornbury again, and again that handy combination of theory and tasks with key. Lots of useful terminology in use. Lots of useful activities for teaching vocabulary to learners effectively. I really enjoyed reading this and doing the tasks. Again, a lot of it was new to me.
Vocabulary: Acquisition, Description and Pedagogy
This is an edited book, so though it’s big and fairly dense, once you know what your focus is, you can dip in to the relevant chapters and extract useful information. It’s an interesting read, (one I plan to return to once I’m finished studying and can choose what to read then do so in my own sweet time…) but I would recommend waiting till you know what your focus is before hitting it as opposed to reading it before you decide on your focus, as general reading. Potentially too time-consuming otherwise! Unless you happen to fancy reading it prior to the course and have bags of time to do so… (Of course this is just personal opinion! I think something like How to Teach Vocabulary is more useful as a general starting point..)
Articles
A couple of articles on collocations that I found both useful and interesting (and I think would make good reading for any teacher, Delta trainee or otherwise) were:
Woollard, G. (2005) Noticing and Learning Collocation in English Teaching Professional Issue 40 pp 48-50 Pavillion
Hill, J. (April 1999) Collocational Competence in English Teaching Professional Issue 11, pp.3-7. Pavillion
LSA2 (Listening)
Listening in the Language Classroom
This was recommended by my tutor to all of us who chose to do listening rather than reading for our first skills LSA. Had never heard of it before but found it absolutely brilliant. I read it cover to cover, used it heavily for my LSA and have incorporated the approach into my teaching ever since. John Field breaks listening down into Decoding and Meaning building processes, going into great depth about what sub-processes make these up, why they are important, how they all interact and, of course, how you can help learners develop them. It also gives a useful overview of previous approaches to teaching listening to contextualise it all. I would highly recommend this book to any ELT professional.
Second Language Listening: Theory and Practice
Another useful text, by Flowerdew and Miller, this provides a historical background to the teaching of listening, puts forward a pedagogical model together with ideas for its application, and considers key issues in teaching and testing listening.
A lot of my reading for this LSA was related to the particular genre I was focussing on, which was radio news broadcast.
LSA3 Phonology
Sound Foundations (see Module 1)
This is a very accessible overview of features of pronunciation, by Dalton and Seidlhofer, with theory strongly rooted in practical application.
English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course
Recommended by my tutor when I decided to do phonology for my third LSA, this book by Roach is quite academic. Like Sound Foundations, it comes with an accompanying CD. I found it was very useful for the analysis section of a Phonology LSA. And of course, if you come to it having already decided on your focus, you can zone in on the relevant sections.
Teaching English Pronunciation
This, much like Dalton and Seidlhofer, gives an accessible overview of features of pronunciation, again combining theory and practical application. It also contains useful lists of difficulties (at sound, word and sentence level) that learners from different countries may experience with English pronunciation.
Listening in the Language Classroom
See LSA2. Additionally: parts of this book are relevant to phonology essays, though of course the focus is on the receptive aspect of pronunciation i.e. how we decode a stream of speech.
LSA4 Speaking
Conversation: from description to pedagogy
This book by Thornbury (again!) and Slade is brilliant and I highly recommend reading it – I read it cover to cover before deciding what to zone in on for my speaking LSA. (Helping higher level learners with anecdotes was the final decision). It does what it says on the tin, and it does so clearly and accessibly. It goes into plenty of depth but it’s not arduous reading at all. It looks at things like the grammar of conversation, the vocabulary of conversation, the discourse features of conversation and different genres within conversation, as well as issues of acquisition, how to teach conversation and how it has been taught in the past.
This is by Eggins and Slade, and a really fascinating read. I borrowed it from the library initially, once I had decided on my focus and read the relevant sections. Have since bought it and plan to read it cover to cover once I’ve finished studying because it just all looks so interesting. But I didn’t have the time to read what wasn’t related to my LSA and haven’t had time since either! Despite the amount of reading I did prior to the course, it was always the case of so much to read, so little time… the pattern continued for my M.A. semester too! Very useful for the analysis section of the essay – unsurprisingly! Of course, it will only be of use to you if your LSA-focus is one of the elements of casual conversation dealt with… that’s what the contents pages and index are for!
You can guess who this one is by…yup, that’s right, it is Thornbury once more! Like the other books in this How to.. series, this is another handy combination of theory and practical application, as well as tasks and a key for you to check your understanding with. This is a useful one to read before deciding on your focus as the content is relevant generally. I read it prior to starting the course and found it a useful base on which to build, so can recommend this route, if you are able to access it.
Articles:
Jones, R. A consciousness-raising approach to the teaching of conversational storytelling in ELTJ volume 55/2. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2001.
The above article I recommend for anybody, Delta trainee or not – it’s clearly written, practical, provides an activity for use in the classroom that is readily adaptable and exemplifies an interesting approach.
Mumford, S. Analysis of Spoken Language: A Case for Production. in ELT Journal Vol. 63/2. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2009.
PDA
Classroom Management Techniques
In a nutshell, this one is useful because it contains information about a range of techniques you can use in the classroom. That’s useful for the PDA because you can probably find something related to what you are working on, if you are working on anything to do with classroom management. Then you can try out Scrivener’s suggestions, see if they work for you, collect evidence for your appendices, reflect on it etc. Even if you aren’t focusing on classroom management for your PDA, trying out different techniques is a good thing to do and may also help you improve between LSAs if any of your minor weaknesses (not major enough to merit being selected for PDA but still earning you “partially met” instead of “met” and therefore bringing your LSA achievement down) are classroom management related.
Experimental Practice
Obviously what you find useful for this will depend on what you want to experiment with. I would recommend using a range of resources – books, but also magazine and journal articles and internet-based resources. English Teaching Professional and Modern English Teacher both contain lots of articles that very usefully combine bite-size theory and practical ideas.
Module 3
For Module 3, my specialism was Teaching English in an English-Speaking Environment. I really enjoyed doing the project and learnt a lot. I also read a huge amount in the process… For the introduction, what I read was specialism specific, but for the other sections, there was a lot of reading that applies whatever the specialism, in terms of the principles involved. I will focus on the widely applicable reading here. Of course application of the principles is then specialism-dependent. I will put what sections I found each book helpful for in brackets. If you want a copy of my complete bibliography, leave a comment at the end of this post with your email address and I’ll send it to you. It’s farrrr too long to put everything down here and annotate!
Language Curriculum Design (For: sections 2,3,4)
Nation and Macalister’s book was the one I found most helpful for module 3, in terms of bringing everything together in one succinct, slim volume. It’s a very useful overview, and goes systematically through principles of Needs Analysis, Course Design and Assessment/Evaluation. It really helped me get my head around the process. It would be my top recommendation for Module 3. Insufficient on its own, of course, but incredibly useful in helping one to make sense of everything. I read it after I had read lots of bits and bobs of other stuff and had multiple input sessions and found it brought order to the chaos of information jostling around in my head.
Teaching and Learning in the Second Language Classroom (For: sections 2,3,4)
Tricia Hedge’s book is useful generally, containing sections on systems, skills, learner autonomy, the classroom etc, and could/should come into play for all of the modules, but for me it really came into its own for Module 3, where I was very grateful for Part 4 – Planning and Assessing Learning.
Testing for Language Teachers (For: sections 2 and 4)
This is a very clearly written book in which Hughes covers all the ins and outs of testing. Well worth getting hold of. Also useful for module 1 paper 2 question 1 (where you have to analyse a language test). I read it cover to cover in preparation for a homework task based on that question, and it definitely helped. In terms of module 3, the relevant principles are covered. I think it’s even useful if you are not doing/planning to do the Delta – assessment is something we are all involved in as teachers, so it’s good to know a bit about it.
Curriculum Development in Language Teaching (For: sections 2,3,4)
This book, by Richards, is another key one for module 3. It provides in-depth coverage of the whole process of developing a course, including evaluation.
Designing Language Courses (For sections 2,3,4)
Another key text for module 3, again covering the whole process of developing a course, including needs analysis. It also has case studies detailing teachers’ experiences of course design.
Articles:
Black, P(2009) Formative Assessment Issues Across the Curriculum: The Theory and the Practice. TESOL Quarterly. Vol. 43, Issue 3, 519-523. (For section 4)
Cotterall, Sara.(2000) Promoting learner autonomy through the curriculum: principles for designing language courses. In ELTJ vol 54/2. Oxford University Press, Oxford. (For section 2)
Davies, A. (2006) What do learners really want from their EFL course? in ELTJ Vol 60/1. (For Section 2)
Graves, K (2008) The Language Curriculum: A social contextual perspective in Language Teaching vol. 41/2. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. (For section 3)
Perrin, G (2009) Diagnostic Procedures in Language Learning MET vol 18 no 4. Pavillion. Accessed: 14 October 2012. (For section 2)
Seedhouse, P (1995) Needs Analysis and the General English Classroom in ELT Journal Volume 49, 11 January; Oxford University Press. (For Section 2)
Stoynoff, S (2012) Looking backward and forward at classroom-based language assessment in ELT Journal Volume 66/4 Special issue. (For Section 4)
Reading tips:
- Read as much as you can before you start the course – it really, really helps!
- Have a look at English Teaching Professional, ELT Journal and Modern English Teacher. Short, up-to-date articles can really complement the books you read a treat. If you’re doing your DELTA with a university-based centre, make use of the library journal subscriptions: Look at the bibliographies in the books you read and articles from the above-mentioned magazines and journal, and search in the library database for journals that are mentioned, to see if your institution has a subscription. There’s loads of interesting stuff out there, as I’ve discovered.
- An extra journal/article type mention, if you can access it: The State-of-the-art article series in Language Teaching Journal are really good, providing overviews of the literature associated with various aspects of ELT. There is one such article per journal edition. Very useful if the aspect happens to coincide with something you are focussing on.
- When you make notes, note also page numbers and what book you’re making notes from (having “Thornbury” in brackets won’t narrow it down much, see…) – this will help when it comes to writing essays, saving precious time that will no longer need to be spent paging through books looking for where that useful yet mysterious quote you want to use originated.
- When you read, take more time to think about how what you are reading connects with what you already know and what you have read elsewhere. (I think doing that really helps strengthen your understanding of things.)
- Once the Delta is over, enjoy the bliss of having *time* to read, *freedom* to choose what to read and *space* to try out what you are reading with your learners. Aaaah! 🙂
- Edited books are very useful: some, like Vocabulary: Acquisition, Description and Pedagogy, contain thematically linked chapters, others like Teaching English to Speakers of Different Languages, contain chapters related to a range of topics – skills, systems, assessment/course design/needs analysis etc. You can zone in on chapters of interest and get a nice, succinct take on any given focus. When you are pressed for time with LSA deadlines looming, this can be very helpful!
- If an author, e.g. Michael Lewis, has written a book, chances are they also have articles in ELT Journal and/or other magazines/journals. If you have online access to these, do an author search – you may find something more up-to-date written by them or something that preceded the book. Of course, articles are shorter so if you are struggling for time with getting through a book, so in looking for articles by the same author on the same topic, you may find a much briefer take on what you are looking at.
Finally, please feel free to add books you’ve read and found useful – for the Delta or otherwise – by commenting using the box below. Ideally, a reference, a brief description of the book, and how it could be helpful for the Delta (which module[s] etc) or otherwise would be good.
Lizzie Pinard 