It is not a requirement that you have the CELTA but you should at least have a similar initial teaching qualification. Whilst many other 4-week preparatory TEFL/TESOL certificate courses exist and most of them equip their candidates with a similar level of knowledge about English language teaching, some of them do not provide their candidates with suitable opportunities for observed teaching practice with regular feedback, which makes them less effective. If you do not have the CELTA, our tutors will ask you during the application process about the initial training course you took. Delta candidates who do not already have a CELTA often find themselves at a disadvantage in the early weeks of the course because they have no previous experience of its intensive nature and they are not expecting to be assessed so rigorously and in so much detail.
The IH Bangkok Delta Modules application process also takes into account the extent and range of your teaching experience and in the process the pre-interview tasks and interview itself are designed to see if the Delta is a suitable choice for you.
We would recommend at least two years and preferably more. In any case, it isn’t just the quantity of the teaching experience you have had, it’s also the quality. Ideally, you should not just have had experience teaching a wide range of levels and some types of class other than general English (e.g. exam classes, EAP or business English), you should also have been working with highly experienced and well qualified teachers who have been able to observe you from time to time and give you advice on your teaching and who have shared their knowledge of resources and effective teaching practice with you, either informally or in the form of teacher workshops.
The CELTA is regulated at Level 5 of the UK Qualifications and Credit Framework and the Delta at Level 7. The two courses are very different. The CELTA is a preparatory pre-service course. It takes a very practical “applied science” approach, i.e. it is a course in which the tutors demonstrate and teach the use of certain techniques and approaches to second language teaching and in order to pass the course, a candidate must show that they are able to replicate these with a certain level of competence and understanding. The Delta is a course for experienced teachers who already have a good level of competence and understanding. Its aim is both to help the candidate develop as a teacher and to open up new career opportunities. In all three modules of the Delta, there is as much of an emphasis on theory as on practice. Reading and research are necessary to pass it just as much as the ability to deliver effective lessons. The Delta aims to increase and deepen your knowledge and understanding of all approaches to second language teaching and to improve your ability to apply them effectively in the classroom. It expects that during the course the candidate will become able to make their own decisions about lesson planning and equally able to justify them with reference both to research and an in-depth observation of learners. In all these ways, it is radically different from the CELTA but two things it does have in common with the CELTA are its intensity and the rigour and detail of the assessment.
On acceptance for the course, we will send you a recommended reading list. We strongly urge all candidates to read at the very least the two general texts we recommend. Beyond that, it is unlikely that it will be practical for you to read all the books on the list but undoubtedly, the more reading you can do before the course, the more it will help you later. We suggest that you start by choosing either areas that you are interested in or areas in which you feel your knowledge is currently weak and read some texts connected with these.
As far as Cambridge Assessment English is concerned, the “DELTA” ceased to exist in 2008 when this qualification was replaced by the current three Delta Modules. However, the term “the DELTA” is still widely used by employers and teachers alike. It is important to realize that you will receive a separate authorized certificate for each module that you have passed, enabling you to say that you have, for example, Delta Module 1 and Delta Module 2. When you have passed all three certificates, Cambridge Assessment English will issue you on request with a grandiosely named “overarching certificate”, which gives evidence of and records the dates when you passed each of the three modules in one handy document. What exactly employers mean by “DELTA-qualified” teachers may vary from place to place and if you think it may be important, you should ask. Probably a majority of employers are most interested in whether you have Modules 1 and 2 and less interested in whether you have Module 3, unless they are looking for someone with a particular specialist knowledge.
Yes, you can. Delta Module 2 can be taken separately either face-to-face or online and full-time or part-time. See Delta Modules Course Dates Formats and Modes.
Not necessarily. You can take the Module 1 exam at any registered Cambridge exam centre. However, you will have to take the responsibility for contacting the centre yourself and you will need to pay the Cambridge examination fee to that centre at least 6 weeks before the date of the exam.
Results for all three modules are released normally on the second Friday in August for the June session and on the second Friday in February for the December session. Results for Module 1 are available to IH Bangkok online by the end of that day. At the moment, results for Module 2 and Module 3 are sent by mail to IH Bangkok on that Friday and arrive in the middle of the following week. However, it is the intention of Cambridge Assessment English to make all results available online in the near future
The Module 3 assignment is intended to be a work of personal research. During our course, we are only able to give you information about the requirements for Module 3 and some very general advice on approaching it. It is advisable to take your time over writing the Module 3 assignment and almost all candidates do, completing it anything from six months to three or four years after the end of the course. Some candidates choose to go it alone on but if you decide after the course that you wish to have online support while writing the assignment from tutors outside of IH Bangkok who are involved with examining Module 3, we are able to provide this for you for a fee.
This would be extremely difficult. For the purposes of Module 3, you need to be able to do a thorough needs analysis of a real class in your chosen specialist area whom you are either currently teaching or have very recently taught. What you chose to do for this needs analysis together with the results of it and how they have influenced the design of your proposed course need to be discussed at length in the assignment. While it might theoretically be possible, it would be catastrophically inadvisable to be teaching a class outside of course hours during an intensive course. You might be able to complete the needs analysis with a class you were teaching before the course began but even in this case, it is going to be very difficult indeed for you to find enough time during the course to dedicate to the needs of Module 3 while you are also working on Modules 1 and 2.
The Module 3 assignment can be submitted on the Monday following the first Wednesday in June and December every year. Before you think of submitting, you should first contact IH Bangkok in the last week of either April or October at the latest so that we can confirm that you have already paid the Cambridge examination fee for Module 3 and then enter your name as a candidate with Cambridge Assessment English. You will not be able to submit if you have not already done this. You should make sure that you are clear about how the files must be presented before emailing them to IH Bangkok, which you should do no later than late morning on the submission date.
Both courses are regulated at Level 7 of the UK Qualifications and Credit Framework (that is, one level above a university degree). The main difference between them is that the Delta is more practical and an MA is more theoretical and research-based. We would advise you to research the types of institution where you would like to work and the type of teaching you would like to be doing to find out whether one qualification rather than the other might be favoured.
Any questions unanswered?
Then contact us at e-mail: delta@ihbangkok.com or click here to send us a message