ITI 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 (and they are also copied in to
this document and in other study guides). The criteria are listed in full in the assessment specifications
document in the Module Two 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 level e.g. not LISTENING but HELPING
LEARNERS AT VERY LOW LEVELS COPE WITH LISTENING or you can narrow by specific situation e.g.
INTONATION IN BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS. Some focuses work better narrowed in one way, some in
another way. 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).
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.

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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 FUTURE FORMS AT LOW LEVELS which would also
limit what you would be expected to include.
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. the first conditional
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 cant 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 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 ?

Dont waste words saying that you will do an analysis, then issues, then approaches this will be
obvious from your contents page.

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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. Dont 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.
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 and in this order. 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.
You may prefer to integrate analysis and issues. As you go through the analysis at each step you can
mention issues that arise pertaining to this particular point. You still need to bear in mind the balance across
all three areas and dont lose sight of your overview. Suggestions for teaching must still be at least a third of
the assignment.

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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 at low levels 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 lower level
learners. The analysis is not about students, it is about the aspect of the system or skill.
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. If you have not narrowed your focus by level, then be sure to make
reference to different levels too.

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 havent 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 dont 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.

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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.
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 todays 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

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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.
Dont just list resources. If you say that visuals are useful for teaching the present continuous, you must say
what kind of visuals (name one of 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 and productive activities. Some areas also have a lot of recycling
games. Unless you have restricted the focus of the assignment by level, you should 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.

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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 students notebook illustrates the point (see appendix 1).
Cutting Edge resource packs 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 students
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 PVs; 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 PVs, 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 PVs 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
This works quite well, as repetition (Thornbury 2003) and integration with existing language helps to fix the PVs 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.

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The conclusion
Keep the conclusion very short a maximum of 100 words. Dont 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.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

If you write an assignment called lexis is it likely to pass ?

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

KEY TO TASK ONE

1, 3, 6, 9 and 10 could work well 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 is too narrow.

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 strong 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 good 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. In fact,
the reader is confused by the apparent change in direction, though this is only a problem of unclear wording in the
introduction as the assignment did go on to deal with listening strategies that would help learners on the phone.

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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 didnt, 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 refer the reader to the rest in an appendix).
In the second part, examples are needed of Cutting Edge activities referred to and of Lewiss 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 dont 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.

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Task five answer key

1.

2.

3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

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.
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.
The five sections of any assignment are introduction, ANALYSIS, ISSUES, TEACHING SOLUTIONS and
conclusion.
ISSUES may be SHORTER than the other two sections.
The ANALYSIS is likely to have a considerable amount of reference to reading in it, the other two sections
will probably have much less.
APPROACHES should never be shorter than the other two sections.
For each ISSUE you should try to FIND EXAMPLES to give from YOUR LEARNERS.
The TEACHING SOLUTIONS section should be PRACTICAL not theoretical.
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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