Several recent international teaching assistant (ITA) studies have observed that U.S. undergraduate students (UGs) are increasingly realizing the importance of having ITAs as their instructors. UGs are recognizing the opportunities that having ITAs gives them to interact with individuals from different parts of the world who have diverse accents and educational cultures. As the notion of global Englishes and the use of English as a lingua franca are becoming more widespread, the ability to effectively communicate with a diverse population has become a relevant and valuable skill to prepare oneself as a global citizen. Workplaces are increasingly diverse and, because of globalization, a lot of work is done on a global scale. With the advent of technologies such as video conferencing, it is now a necessity to be adept in interacting effectively with people from different parts of the world who possess different accents and intonations. Because of this, there has been a shift in UGs’ perception of ITAs, from perceiving them as a “foreign TA problem” (Bailey, 1983, p. 309) to perceiving them as a resource that can be utilized to hone UGs’ multicultural communication skills.

In Alberts, Hazen, and Theobald’s (2013) study, for example, UGs who perceived the accents of their nonnative-English-speaking instructors to be strong rarely claimed to have struggled with understanding an accent over the long term. On the contrary, UGs who had been taught by nonnative-English-speaking instructors exhibited far more positive attitudes toward them than those who had no experience of being taught by nonnative-English-speaking instructors. That almost half (48.8%) of the 285 UGs surveyed said that they enjoyed listening to foreign accents suggests that students do not always see foreign accents as a barrier. In fact, 73.3% of the students surveyed saw the importance of learning to understand foreign accents. Moreover, a majority (91.3%) of the students surveyed agreed that it is beneficial to learn from people who might bring different perspectives to the classroom—ITAs being one such group of people.

In Khan’s (2013) study, almost 60% of the 436 UGs surveyed saw the benefit of being taught by ITAs. They saw it as an opportunity to learn about new cultures and languages. The open-ended survey offered a more authentic perspective of UGs on ITAs. UGs in the study recognized ITAs as a unique resource that can be advantageous in preparing them for the global world, as demonstrated in comments like

• “They [ITA] offer a different perspective and share information about their home country”

• “[ITAs offer] different perspective on cultures; new ideas that may not be American”

• “[ITAs] know how to speak foreign languages really well for foreign language classes” (Khan, 2013, p. 49)

Moreover, the study (Khan, 2013) reports UGs getting used to and getting practice in understanding foreign accents of English when attending classes taught by ITAs. Their view of exposure to foreign accents as beneficial for their future is reflected in comments such as, “It helps me to understand accents that I will probably be exposed to for the rest of my life” and “…you are trained in your listening and comprehension skills” (Khan, 2013, p. 49).

Many ITA educators and researchers are now making the most of this perception shift by designing interventions and structured contact programs that explicitly or implicitly point out the benefits of having ITAs as instructors (Villarreal, 2013; Kang, Rubin, & Lindemann, 2015; Meyer & Mao, 2014). Instead of burdening the ITAs entirely with improving understandability in class, which in actuality is a two-way process, both the ITAs and the UGs need to take steps to make the communication process more effective and beneficial. Because UGs are now inclined to view ITAs positively, researchers have found it worthwhile to include UGs in ITA education structured programs extended either throughout a semester (Smith, Strom, & Muthuswamy, 2005), for several weeks (Derwing, Rossiter, & Munro, 2002), or just for an hour-long orientation program (Kang, Rubin, & Lindemann, 2015).

It is time that we retire the concept of the “foreign TA problem” (Bailey, 1983, p. 309), because it is based on a widespread yet distorted view resulting from press reports sensationalizing rare cases in which students cannot understand instructors with strong accents (Villarreal, 2013). In reality, researchers are now finding that many UGs are receptive to ITAs.

References

Alberts, H. C., Hazen, H. D., & Theobald, R. (2013). Teaching and learning with accented English. In H. C. Alberts & H. D. Hazen (Eds.), International students and scholars in the United States: Coming from abroad (pp. 199–217). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bailey, K. (1983). Foreign teaching assistants at U.S. universities: Problems in interaction and communication. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 308–310.

Derwing, T. M., Rossiter, M. J., & Munro, M. J. (2002). Teaching native speakers to listen to foreign accented speech. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 23, 245–259.

Kang, O., Rubin, D., & Lindemann, S. (2015). Mitigating US undergraduates’ attitudes toward international teaching assistants. TESOL Quarterly, 49, 681–706.

Khan, A. A. (2013). Understanding undergraduate students’ perceptions of international teaching assistants (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. 3615364)

Meyer, K. R., & Mao, Y. (2014). Comparing student perceptions of the classroom climate created by U.S. American and international teaching assistants. Higher Learning Research Communications, 4(3), 12–22.

Smith, R. A., Strom, R. E., & Muthuswamy, N. (2005). Undergraduates’ rating of domestic and international teaching assistants: Timing of data collection and communication intervention. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 34, 3–21.

Villarreal, D. (2013). Closing the communication gap between undergraduates and international faculty. CATESOL Journal, 24(1), 8–28.

Asma Khan is a full-time lecturer in the Department of Marketing at California State University, Fullerton. She teaches Business Writing courses. Her research focuses on ITA education and TESOL methodology.