[Instructor] Merry Christmas to everyone. Enjoy the holiday season here in the United States. Try to taste some egg nog. It is a yummy drink.

[Student responses]

–Merry Christmas everyone!

–Marry Christmas [sic]

–Merry Christmas to all and see you soon. I will miss you!

It was a simple exchange, but one of dozens of positive messages between Debbie Stonich, the instructor of a new course at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), “ITA Effectiveness,” and her students. Judging from the tone of exchanges over 4 months, the consistent encouragement to students both in and out of class was heard loud and clear. And it was easy—by means of the What’s App phone app.

“ITA Effectiveness,” launched in fall 2016, was the result of extended conversations between UTD administrators responsible for excellence in faculty teaching and ELS Language Centers, which was providing ESL instruction on the university grounds. ELS is primary known for offering intensive English programs in more than 60 locations in the United States, but it also provides training in cross-cultural understanding, university acculturation, and ESL teacher development. The UTD course represented ELS’ first foray into a blended-skills model for ITAs. Following close dialogues with faculty, ELS developed a curriculum with three primary threads:

• Oral communication: The course used English Communication for International Teaching Assistants (Waveland Press, 2010) to develop skills for discourse intonation, thought groups, prominence, pitch movement and level, tone choice and key choice. Students also improve specific areas of deficit in pronunciation by using Carnegie Speech’s Native Accent software, which creates individual learning paths for each student using first language and personal areas of need.

• Pedagogy: Skills for the effective teaching of American undergraduates were developed by using sample university lectures for analysis, by discussing portions of English Communication for International Teaching Assistants relevant to teaching, and through study of Teaching American Students: A Guide for International Faculty and Teaching Assistants in Colleges and Universities (Harvard University Press, 2006).

• Acculturation: Participants learned about and reflected on characteristics of the American millennial student through on-campus interviews of undergraduates, class discussions, and use of What’s App. The study of American idioms and behaviors was part of every class.

The decision to use What’s App was the brainchild of Stonich, who holds an MATESOL and who had previously conducted training for public school teachers in ESL. “The ITA students were mostly brand-new arrivals, somewhat overwhelmed by English immersion and the task of speaking nothing but English for the first time in their lives,” she explained. “Some were quite accomplished—one was even pursuing a PhD—but [they all] were struggling both with adjustment issues and with being comprehensible.” Of the nine students attending the course, seven were Chinese, one Indian, and one Korean.

What’s App is a tool that can be used via phone, on the web, and on a desktop computer. Instructors use it to create dedicated groups that communicate to all members simultaneously via chat, video, or voice message. Users can also use it to make free phone calls, using Internet connections. But probably the best feature for anxious, newly arrived students is the instantaneous communication for when students have an immediate need-to-know question about a language or cultural issue. For example:

• Students readily shared with each other information about campus events—and had soon created a “family” of individuals shoring each other up in periods of discouragement.

• Stonich posted videos of student presentations on the app and connected class discussion to those videos. This “public exposure” was an added incentive for students to prepare thorough presentations and to comment on common challenges in public speaking.

• In November, one student texted in a panic: “Debbie, what’s Amber Alert?” because he had just gotten an alert message on his phone. Debbie was able to respond and reassure him within 5 minutes.

• Students who wanted to converge for a study group were easily able to contact everyone in the class and get most of the group to attend on a few hours’ notice.

• Questions about idiomatic language flowed through the What’s App channel regularly—sometimes four to six times a day—and could be easily answered within a few seconds by Stonich, thus saving her explanation time in the regular weekly class.

• As a facilitator, I was able to send information about how to apply for ITA positions to all participants equally and to provide “outsider” encouragement from a distance—another state.

• Once set up, What’s App was not labor intensive for the instructor. Stonich reported no more than 15–30 minutes of involvement a day through frequent short postings, and she also stated that she felt much closer to her students by means of this tool.

Use of What’s App as a form of cultural awareness, comfort, and support was so popular that students continued using it for more than a month after the 8-week course finished. In the end-of-course survey, students cited What’s App as one of their favorite course features; they cited the need for a longer course to get even more such exchanges. What’s App has strong privacy features, and if a teacher wishes to close a group to save phone memory, exchanges can be easily archived. I would highly recommend its use for any ITA class.

Susan Matson is the Director of Teaching Training and Development/Director of Curriculum at ELS Language Centers in Princeton, New Jersey. She has taught ELS in Intensive English Programs in three states, worked for the U.S. Department of State in Eastern Europe as an English Language Fellow, and also served as director of curriculum for ELS, which teaches English and conducts teacher training in more than 60 locations in the United States.