The International House Cairo Certificate in Advanced Methodology.
Do you want to improve your knowledge of methodology? And do you want to increase your chances of being accepted onto the DELTA? Are you looking to further develop your career as an English teacher?
This is what the International House Advanced methodology course does. This course is for those who wish to further develop their knowledge of teaching methodology, so this is probably of particular interest to people who have taken the CELTA already.
CELTA gives you a very general introduction, but not much detail, we give you the basics on a CELTA but this course will provide more detail.
Of course, there are teachers who want to take the DELTA who might not have taken CELTA, because maybe they didn’t feel the need, or they are very, very experienced and they were working in an environment where they were using a lot of communicative, teaching methodology already. So they’re thinking, “okay, I’d like to get into the DELTA,” but it would be good to get ready.
I would strongly recommend this, of course, it is important to have done the CELTA, but what I mean is that jumping into the DELTA cold is often a very big mistake.
So if you’re going to commit to something as intensive as the DELTA, which (a) develops your theoretical knowledge of methodology and (b) improves your teaching skills, it’s not a good idea to jump straight in without some background because the DELTA is like doing a mini Masters.
So the more background you have, the easier it will be, and even when you have a strong background, many found it difficult.
If you’ve done the CELTA and you’re thinking about doing DELTA, this course is a good idea. If you haven’t taken the CELTA and you really want to do the DELTA, this course is going to help you a great deal.
A very brief overview of the course.
To join the course, you need to have taught for at least a year. International House Cairo recommends 600 hours of teaching; how you divide that up will vary, because it depends on how many hours a week that you have taught where you work already and your timetable, so this will vary a great deal.
So you should have taught before, you should have some kind of teaching certificate and it doesn’t have to be the CELTA because you might have a bachelor of Education from your own country.
The course objectives are to increase your theoretical knowledge of teaching, so all the subjects that you covered on the CELTA, for example, you will now cover them in more detail. You will also learn a lot about the different types of teaching, so you will look at these in more detail. You will look at how to teach productive skills lessons more effectively, how to teach receptive skills lessons more effectively, and how to analyze the language in more depth for teaching purposes. And of course, phonology and lesson planning.
Again, on CELTA, for example, we gave you the very basics of lesson planning, we provided you with usually two or three lesson Frameworks such Test Teach Test, PPP, Guided Discovery.
So you look at things like task-based learning as well, which often is referred to on CELTA too, but we often don’t get time to do that in as much detail as we would like. We also look at materials, not only materials development but how to use materials more effectively, and not just depending on materials in general but also looking at approaches like dogma, for example, which many teachers often have questions about and don’t often know how to use.
Like the DELTA, we will be looking very carefully at discourse, so that’s spoken and written. Some will be familiar with this already, because if you studied English language and Linguistics at university, you have a strong background in this already, so this is something that you will encounter on the Advanced Methodology course.
The length of the course will vary, but we’re looking at approximately 28 to 30 hours. You’ll have tutors delivering the sessions and of course there will be input sessions like you had on CELTA and there will also be workshops. You’ll also have like mini projects, so we’ll ask you to analyze something and then come back and talk about it all within the session itself, depending on how much detail is required.
There will be pre-reading before the course and some reading during the course. We’ll give you references to examine, maybe articles and chapters from methodology books, and relevant websites where appropriate.
Of course there will be homework, just like the CELTA, you will have some homework tasks like reflective tasks, especially a couple after the course is finished. At the end, there is also what they call a reflective essay, this will be between 1,500 and 2,000 words, so a bit like two CELTA assignments, basically.
So this will be a reflective task as it says what you think about what you’ve learned from the course and what you will implement and incorporate into your own teaching after the course.
And of course you’ll be observing each other and the people that the tutors who are training you on the course.
As I said, this course is to help you to decide whether you really want to do the DELTA or not and because doing the DELTA is a very big decision, you shouldn’t jump into it lightly.
The Advanced Methodology course is a requirement before you actually do the DELTA preparation course, so these are stepping stones.
So if you’re serious about doing a DELTA, do the Advanced Methodology, then you do the DELTA preparation and then you jump into the DELTA, so there are stages.
There are two formats that we will be following, face-to-face and online, and course dates will probably be around June/July, and we have an application form and you’ll see that on the website. It’s basically the same kind of form that you filled in for CELTA, but without an essay, it’s filling your details because we need to know how many people are Interested in doing the course, for example, how many people would like to do it online, how many people would like to do it face-to-face, etc.
So the Advanced Methodology is the beginning of your journey towards the DELTA. We do see people who try to jump into the DELTA too early, especially those who haven’t done CELTA already, but the Celta is a pre-service course. We didn’t expect you to have any experience when you started the CELTA course, but with this one, you need a lot of preparation and as much experience as possible.
So don’t jump into DELTA without being prepared, this is why Cambridge advises at least two years post-CELTA because everything that you covered on the CELTA course, you will cover in much more detail, so more intensive than the CELTA.
The more preparation you have behind you, the more able you will be to complete the course.
Send any further queries to teachertraining@IHCairoeg.com