Delta 5b

Module Two

Report for the internally-assessed Professional Development Assignment

Candidate name Katya Kirichenko

Centre name The Distance DELTA
Centre number 10239
Candidate number    
Assignment title
     
(Experimental Practice)

Grade
Please select
5t
Tutor name Neil Anderson (RA Stage 1) Date: h April 2013

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Assessment Criteria – Professional Development Assignment: Reflection and Action

Successful candidates must:

1 present an assignment which:
a) is written in language which is clear, accurate, easy to follow and does not impose a strain on the
reader
b) is cohesive and clearly ordered and in which component parts of the assignment are relevant to the
topic
c) uses appropriate terminology accurately
d) refers to and references key sources
e) contains a bibliography of key sources consulted
f) follows widely accepted referencing conventions
g) respects the word limits of individual stages of the assignment and the overall word limit (2,000–2,500
words) and states the number of words used.

Tutor comment and feedback

2 focus on the topic of the assignment by:

a) selecting some key strengths and weaknesses in their teaching practices and providing a rationale for
their selection
b) selecting approaches/procedures/techniques/materials to use to address the issues identified in 2a
c) critically evaluating the effectiveness of the selected approaches/procedures/techniques/materials
d) critically evaluating the effectiveness of methods and/or documents they have selected to gather data
to allow them to focus on their teaching practices
e) providing an appropriate action plan to promote their professional development
f) critically reflecting on their teaching practices and beliefs during the course of this assignment

Tutor comment and feedback

Stage 1
Overall, you set yourself a big challenge here, Katya, which is to be commended. I think you pulled it off well for
the most part, though there are important areas to consider for your future teaching of grammar.

The key strengths were:

 Use of contextualised dialogues to provide examples of when the backshift was used and not used; you
had clear model sentences here. (7c)
 Your ability to and willingness to “remedy” a situation in which learners were unsure of the rules.
Though this should have been better clarified at the teach stage, you micro-taught the controlled
practice and decided to use the feedback slot to do further clarification using new examples. This was
good reactive teaching. (6c, 8d, 9a)
 Variety in production – from written sentence level, to pressured oral production, to contextualised
written practice. Learners remained well engaged in an area that is traditionally a source of frustration
for them. (8c)
 The lesson was well-planned from the ground up, and there are lots of encouraging elements to your
planning, including your outline of the learners in the profile and commentary, your staging and the
scope of your focus (though see my comments on wording the aim). (5a, 5h, 5k)

Consider the following:

 Clarification: you need to ensure all students are involved here and you fully cover what the learners
need to know in order to implement rules in practice. A lot of this comes down to improving your use of
precise elicitation / checking questions and drawing not just on one learner to give you a rule (this
doesn’t tell you much about the others). (8a, 7d)
 It is very important that learners have a clear sense of what they are supposed to do in the production
stage, beyond completing a dialogue i.e. how many instances of the TL do you want? Backshift or not?
Remind them clearly. (9c)
 In general, task set-ups are sometimes a little loose; consider making these clear by ensuring all
students are paying attention, checking the students know what to do and monitoring immediately to
ensure all students are doing it. Give time limits where it will further help the aim (e.g. skim reading) an
in order to better synchronize students. (9c)
 Spending time at the end of the lesson focusing on the progress made with reported speech rather than
an elaborate voting system for content feedback. This felt like a missed opportunity and looking at their
writing reveals they are partway their but not fully so some attention to examples to recap on rules
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 would have been beneficial. (7e)
 Some elements of planning could be improved, notably more explicit reference to background reading
in the lesson plan commentary. (5k)

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

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 Assessment Criteria – Professional Development Assignment: Experimental Practice

1 present an assignment which:

a) is written in language which is clear, accurate, easy to follow and does not impose a strain on the
reader
b) is cohesive and clearly ordered and in which component parts of the assignment are relevant to the
topic
c) uses appropriate terminology accurately
d) refers to and references key sources
e) contains a bibliography of key sources consulted
f) follows widely accepted referencing conventions
g) respects the word limits of individual stages of the assignment and the overall word limit (2,000 – 2,500
words) and states the number of words used.

Tutor comment and feedback

3 focus on the topic of the assignment by:

a) demonstrating understanding of selected approaches/procedures/techniques/materials
b) justifying the selection of the selected approaches/procedures/techniques/materials
c) making appropriate reference to theory, to the characteristics and needs of specific groups of learners,
and to their own professional development to inform their selection of
approaches/procedures/techniques and materials
d) critically evaluating the effectiveness of methods and/or documents they have selected to gather data
to allow them to focus on their teaching practices
e) evaluating their chosen area of experimental practice with reference to the specific group of learners
and their own professional development
f) showing awareness of the links between practice and underlying theory.

Tutor comment and feedback

Overall tutor comment and feedback on the Professional Development Assignment

(Please summarise strengths and weaknesses with reference to the criteria.)

University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations

Teaching Awards
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Cambridge
CB1 2EU
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E-mail: deltaadmin@cambridgeesol.org
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