This post is part of a series of posts I wrote about my own experience of taking DELTA. The first post describing which DELTA preparation courses I took and how I did on my other Modules is here. As for Module 1, I took my Module 1 exam in December, 2014 and I got Pass with Distinction.
This is what you are allowed to bring into the exam room – some water, an ID and pens. These fine-point pens became my obsession in the run up to the exam. I single-handedly depleted my university stationary store’s supply of these pens.
Here are my tips on doing the DELTA Module 1:
Tip #1. Do your background reading and study the Handbook before the course starts
This is the most important tip and I can’t emphasize enough – if you are doing a course to prepare for the exam, do your background reading BEFORE the start of the course. I learned this from my own mistakes. In 2014, it had been over a year after I did my CELTA and I had been planning to enroll in a Module 1 preparation course. When shopping around for courses, I saw that a course for the June exam was about to start, so I panicked and applied. After I was accepted, I started looking at the course materials and realized that I have no idea what’s happening. I decided that there is no way I’d be ready for the exam in June. I deferred the course to the following fall (a very cool thing that ITI Istanbul where I did my course lets you do – you can do the online course more than once!). Then I did what I should have done before I started:
- Study the DELTA Handbook so that I knew exactly what the exam consists of. You should know the layout of papers, how many tasks there are and how many points each part is worth. There is also specific advice in the handbook on how to approach each task. Finally, there is a sample exam with answers. Once you read all that and do the sample exam, you`ll get an idea of what your strengths and weaknesses are and you can prioritize your reading.
- Start on my reading. If you are doing a course, you`ll be provided with a list of suggested reading but here are some things that helped me.
First of all, here are the books that I found useful. I know it’s a huge list but some of these books are fairly short (especially the How to Teach… series) and you don’t need to read them from the beginning to end. Also, you will need most of these for Modules 2 and 3.
Yuliya Speroff 