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Barbara Beers
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Miki Mendelsohn
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Pamela Pollock
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Professionals who work with international teaching assistants
(ITAs) are always looking for new activities to use with students. ITAs
have a variety of goals and needs in order to work effectively as
teaching assistants and instructors: They need to improve their speaking
skills, but at the same time they need to build their familiarity with
the United States, their new universities, and the expectations of their
prospective students. There are many different approaches and
activities being used to help ITAs develop their linguistic, cultural,
and pedagogical skills. This article is based on the activities we
collected at TESOL 2014 in Portland, Oregon at a workshop designed to
share the wealth of practices in ITA education. In the session, the
organizers were specifically looking at ITA curricula from the
standpoint of three major categories: pronunciation and grammar;
vocabulary, fluency, and listening; and pedagogy. This article focuses
on activities from the first two broad language categories. Pedagogy
will be featured in the second installment of this article, slated for
the next issue of the ITAIS Newsletter.
Pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and listening are
the main linguistic skills that ITA professionals target, either
directly or indirectly, in their courses. Pronunciation and grammar tend
to be more discrete and related to accuracy, while vocabulary, fluency,
and listening tend to be broader, more holistic features of language.
Here we share a brief description and some detail on each category. For
anyone interested in developing ITA curricula, a careful consideration
of the balance of skills you want students to learn and overall goals of
your program is needed. Each of these categories on its own could be
one class; the beauty of ITA curricula is how they are balanced and
integrated.
Pronunciation
First, let’s explore some major trends in the teaching of
pronunciation. Although all instructors agree that the needs of new ITAs
encompass much more than a change in pronunciation, it is a salient
feature for undergraduate students, and is often the linguistic feature
that will help ITAs improve their comprehensibility most noticeably. By
pronunciation, ITA instructors mean the suprasegmental aspects as well
as (or even more than) the segmental aspects of language. Targeting
suprasegmentals, or the overall rhythm and intonation of speech, is a
primary point of focus in most ITA courses.
The pronunciation textbooks used in the programs represented in
the workshop are:
- English Communication for International Teaching Assistants. G. Gorsuch, C. Meyers, L. Pickering, and D. T. Griffee. 2010
- Well Said. L. Grant. 2010.
- Clear Speech. J.B. Gilbert 1984, 1993
- Targeting Pronunciation. S.F. Miller. 2000.
- Focus on Pronunciation. L. Lane. 2005.
- Pronunciation for Success. C. Meyers and S. Holt. 1998.
- American Accent Training. A. Cook. 2009
- Whadday Say, N. Weinstein. 2000
- Learner English. M. Swan and B. Smith. 2001.
- English Pronunciation in Use. M. Hancock. 2003.
- Academic Interactions. C. Feak, S. Reinhart, and T. N. Rohlck. 2009
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Accurate English. M. Thorn. 1989.
Various kinesthetic activities, which include clapping rhythms,
using rubber bands to show syllable length, and showing jaw openness
using markers have come from some of these textbooks and are also used
on their own.
Programs are also using software to assist in recording,
comparing, and analyzing pronunciation. Praat, Carnegie Speech Software,
and American Speech Sounds for Academics were discussed in the session.
Other online resources that can be used for mirroring, imitation,
watching mouth movements, and so on, include:
In conjunction with consideration of both mirroring and online
resources, many programs include audio journal assignments in which
students record themselves speaking and then analyze their own speech.
While useful for pronunciation (for example if a student listens to,
records, and practices key terms and sentences from his academic field),
audio journals can also be useful to help students monitor their
grammar, fluency, and vocabulary development. Pronunciation can also be
paired with grammar when considering the pronunciation of reductions,
and -ed and -s endings. A deeper consideration of how ITA programs treat
grammar is relevant.
Grammar
While most ITA programs don’t teach grammar explicitly, there
is agreement that grammatical accuracy should be addressed with
individual students if it is interfering with comprehensibility.
Generally, students in ITA courses already know the grammar rules; they
just need to be reminded to use them properly. Discussions of grammar
also arise in discussions of informal vs. formal language, different
phrasing options, and general pragmatics. There are many activities that
help students consider various structures and uses of language. Simply
brainstorming with a class different ways to say something is a great
way to begin. An instructor could target and analyze grammar functions
based on particular types of presentations and activities (i.e.,
persuasive speech or debate). Some specific functions to consider are:
storytelling and narration to work on verb tenses, description to work
on order of adjectives, or use of modals to be polite. The list is
endless.
As mentioned before, audio journals can be very useful to help a
student monitor his or her grammatical accuracy. Having students
transcribe and correct errors from various production assignments or
correct their peers can also be helpful. There are various online tools
that can be used to facilitate this process, such asVideoANT. Some programs help students
notice the difference in structure and usage between English and their
native languages, using resources like EnglishDaily.com.
Finally, a great suggestion for how to help students use the
language structures they will need as teaching assistants is to ask them
to consider themselves as “translators” between the textbook and the
students. This requires them to practice saying things in shorter,
simpler sentences; use analogies and examples; and pay attention to
transitional words and phrases.
Vocabulary
As with grammar, most ITA programs don’t teach vocabulary
explicitly. The idea is that students need to activate the vocabulary
they may have already learned in a written context and augment it with
common words and phrases used frequently in the graduate school
environment.
A general topic that needs elaboration (but is good to keep in
mind) is having students learn “lexical bundles.” In a more traditional
vein, a list of some useful ideas follows:
- Read TED Talks transcripts in conjunction with watching videos.
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Observe a class: What types of transitional phrases are being used?
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Observe a lab: How do they give instructions?
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Go over idioms, both for listening comprehension and for usage.
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Teach a “new word of the day”: Teach it in class, on board. Have students try to use it.
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Have students define a term and then restate it using
examples. Go from shorter to longer, or longer to shorter depending on
the goal.
- Read a definition or watch a teacher talk about a term and
have the student restate it in his or her own words.
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Teach Latin and foreign expressions students may encounter in
conversation, such as vis a vis.
In addition to these activities, there are useful games that
allow students to practice definitions. These include Taboo, Catch Phrase, or a
field-specific Password game. In these types of
games, students take turns explaining the words while the rest of the
group, or a partner, guesses them. The game Dictionary, with real and made-up definitions, is a
good activity to work on vocabulary as well as fluency. These games also
allow students to practice the interaction and negotiation that
teaching assistants encounter, especially when they have to come up with
alternate explanations or examples.
Fluency
A broad goal for ITAs, and any language learner, is to develop
fluency. Once again, audio journals can be quite useful here. For
example, students could record themselves for 3 minutes each day on a
topic of their choice or as assigned by their instructor. This can also
be done in class with everyday topics where the students are asked to
explain and elaborate on the issue. To help with fluency, clarity, and
conciseness, have students practice giving a talk three times: the first
time for 5 minutes, then 2 minutes, then 1 minute, with time for
feedback provided after the first two times. Another fun way to get
students talking more is to have student and undergrads do role plays to
practice the language of specific situations (e.g., departmental
reception, cocktail party, office hours).
A motivating activity for those students who are focused on
their research, and of course a good fluency activity for all, is for
students to do poster sessions for other ESL teachers, graduate
administrators, or any audience of at least three listeners. Students
explain the poster several times, improving their delivery each time. A
follow-up to the poster session is to have students then give a talk
about the topic. Students can practice giving their talk to different
audiences, and it can be particularly helpful to have them work with a
novice audience. For example, one program is able to have ITAs talk
about their research to high school students.
Summarizing or paraphrasing is also a good way to work on
fluency. Some sources that were suggested are:
Another way to use summarizing or restating is in small group
discussions where students choose a topic and lead a discussion. In this
activity, while increasing their fluency in response to the
contributions to the discussion, they also work on listening and
accuracy by restating what another student has said.
Listening
Through all of these activities we can see a clear connection
with listening skills. Listening is also not usually taught explicitly
in ITA programs, but comes up in conjunction with the skills mentioned
above. Summarizing oral material, while clearly a fluency and vocabulary
building activity, also demands careful listening. In addition to the
listening skills necessary for the above tasks, listening can be focused
with such additions as having students notice various elements, such as
stress, phrases, lexical bundles, idiomatic phrases, and transitions. A
favorite website for listening to quick and idiomatic speech is Common Student Questions on the University of Minnesota’s website.
In conclusion, it is clear that ITA professionals are using a
variety of methods and activities to help students develop the skills
that will carry them through their graduate programs (through
development of their communication skills, both for teaching and
scholarship) and into their future careers. ITA programs are providing
strategies that launch students into graduate school and onto the path
of being lifetime language learners; many of the activities shared here
are ones that ITAs can do on their own as they continue to improve their
language. It is also apparent that some of these skills are well
connected with general professional development activities for all
graduate students, not just for international students who are working
to improve their English. In our next installment, we will share what we
learned from the discussion of activities that programs use to target
pedagogy, and how these linguistic skills can be developed in
conjunction with the specific pedagogical environment for which an ITA
is preparing. We also plan to share more detailed descriptions of some
of the key activities mentioned here. Stay tuned!
Barbara Beers works in the Center for Teaching and Learning at
the University of Minnesota in the International Faculty and TA Program,
providing instruction and consultation in English language and
classroom communication strategies to nonnative-English-speaking
faculty, teaching assistants, and prospective teaching
assistants.
Miki Mendelsohn is the coordinator of the English Language
Program at Princeton University’s McGraw Center for Teaching and
Learning. She has been working with international graduate students for
more than 20 years and has taught in Israel as well as the United
States.
Pamela Pollock currently works as an assistant director at the
Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, where
she teaches classes and develops programming for international graduate
students, and oversees the Teaching Certificate Program (an important
professional development initiative for graduate students). |
