ITAIS Newsletter - February 2016 (Plain Text Version)

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In this issue:
LEADERSHIP UPDATES
•  LETTER FROM THE CHAIR
•  LETTER FROM THE CHAIR-ELECT
•  LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
ARTICLES
•  EVALUATING AND IMPROVING RATER TRAINING FOR ITA PERFORMANCE TESTS
•  SOLUTIONS FOR COMMON PROBLEMS ITAS ENCOUNTER IN THEIR CLASSROOMS
•  TEACHING TIP: ACTIVITIES TO BUILD FLUENCY
•  SUMMARY OF MID-ATLANTIC ITA FALL CONFERENCE
ABOUT THIS COMMUNITY
•  TEASER: COMING TO TESOL 2016: "COORDINATING AND STAFFING AN ITA PROGRAM ON YOUR OWN"
•  ABOUT THIS COMMUNITY

LETTER FROM THE CHAIR-ELECT

Elizabeth Gillstrom, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Hello ITAIS! My name is Elizabeth Gillstrom, and I have been serving as our steering committee’s chair-elect since March 2015.

In my second letter, we preview the work showcased in our ITAIS academic session for TESOL 2016 in greater detail. My main job on the steering committee is to organize this session. I hope you will join us on Friday, 8 April, from 1 pm–2:45 pm in room 319 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

We’ll hear from three researchers who work with conversation analysis (CA). I was inspired to coordinate this panel after viewing a session at TESOL 2015 by our current ITAIS secretary, Dr. Stephen Daniel Looney (Pennsylvania State University). He put together a fascinating research-oriented presentation on the use of discourse markers in physics labs. There was positive buzz in the room after his talk, and it was clear that our IS wanted to hear more!

I have asked Dr. Looney to return this year and present on his current research, which he describes here:

Early ITA research noted the “messiness” of university science lab interactions (Myers, 1994). This presentation unpacks some of this messiness by looking at pre-openings between ITAs and undergraduates in Introduction to physics labs. In these sequences, students and ITAs rely on distinct verbal and nonverbal resources to focus shared attention on lab equipment and reports before asking and answering questions. Implications for the use of naturally occurring video data as well as authentic classroom materials in ITA preparation are discussed.

Dr. Looney will be joined by Innhwa Park (West Chester University), who will present on research she does in cooperation with Stephanie Kim (California State University, Northridge). You may remember the work of Dr. Park and Dr. Kim from the March 2014 joint ITA-AL IS newsletter. This is how they describe the direction of their current research:

Using conversation analysis, this study examines video-recorded interactions between questioners, who act as “undergraduate students,” and test takers during an English oral proficiency exam for international teaching assistants. After the Q-A sequence, the test taker has to find his/her way back to the ongoing talk to keep the flow of the presentation. The focus of this study is on the ways in which the test taker organizes the shift from the Q-A sequence to the main topic sequence. We also attempt to explore how they compare to those of (near-) native English speaker TAs.

Finally, we are thrilled to have Jean Wong (The College of New Jersey) join us to discuss “Storytelling as a Window on L2 Interactional Competence.” Dr. Wong does not work directly with ITAs, but is an expert in CA, and the coauthor of a book on the subject, Conversation Analysis and Second Language Pedagogy. Here is a preview of her talk:

In this session, I examine two different stories produced by the same L2 speaker of English in two different L1-L2 conversations. Using a CA framework, I analyze the stories on a turn-by-turn basis with respect to their occasioned productions, and consider how that might inform us about the L2 user’s interactional competence. Ramifications for second language pedagogy are suggested.

Again, please join us Friday, 8 April, from 1 pm–2:45 pm in room 319 at the Baltimore Convention Center. If you are inspired by this panel and would like to provide input for the next academic session, please let me know!

Reference

Myers, C. (1994). Question-based discourse in science labs: Issues for ITAs. In C. G. Madden & C. L. Myers (Eds.), Discourse and performance of international teaching assistants (pp. 83–102). Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.