Over all my experience of the DELTA course was more than positive, it honed my skills and allowed me to develop my teaching skills and language awareness. Though there is a need to assess teacher understanding the inauthentic examination under timed conditions does not fufil the ethos of the vocational training. How many classes do you teach or prepare for where you are under timed examination conditions? none is the emphatic answer. Good teachers use resources to draw on, growing up in the emphatically anti grammer translation era of the 80s and 90s I often refer to grammar texts to clariffy nuances etc, perhaps in a 10 years time I will become a walking grammar. I have a professor ( I am studying for my MA in Linguistics) who is just that, a walking grammar but an appalling teacher and lecturer, the thought that he taught ESL/EAP for thrity years fills me with horror. He would love the exam.
But until then the usual methods of designing analysisng ansd assesing this area should also reflect the real life scenario. By all means keep it timed, but make the tasks all authentic to the teaching experience and linked ,allow teachers refence materials. After all none can use reference material without understanding.