ITAIS Newsletter - December 2018 (Plain Text Version)
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THE INTERNATIONAL TA PROBLEM
Did the title of this article catch your attention? It is the title of a diagnostic paragraph intended to be read aloud by an audience of international teaching assistants (ITAs). A paragraph on ITA deficiencies and obstacles, found in a book that our program has been using for quite a few years, was the very first text that my ITA students encountered. Putting myself in their shoes, it seems amazing that they showed up to the first class after the diagnostic with as positive an attitude as they did. At its core, the book’s content is reasonable; when it comes to classroom teaching, everyone can benefit from practice in specific skills, and people who learned English as a second language might not have developed awareness of cultural norms in American universities or pragmatics of the classroom, or practiced questioning techniques necessary for teaching. The textbook completely reflects such a focus. The grammar points, such as negative question tags and level of directness in requests, are grounded in teaching examples and clearly explain applicability. I would recommend those aspects of our course book to anyone tasked with leading or training. Honestly, the textbook in its best moments reminds me of the humility and responsiveness that teaching, semester after semester, requires me to bring to the table. Despite that, I found myself in the surprising position of being wary toward this text, which I had been assigned to teach. The example I have provided is one of multiple examples of outdated attitudes in the text, which I acknowledge may not have been seen as problematic in the first edition, published in 1992. My novel situation this semester, as a first time ITA instructor with a problematic textbook and little grounded knowledge of how students arrived in our course, has been a learning opportunity for both myself and my students. Eight weeks into my journey as an ITA instructor, I write with the fresh perspective of a newcomer and posit that the true “international TA problem” at our university lies in dated or troubling material included in our book and in our university’s procedure for placing the ITAs in the course. Previewing the Course I had made several attempts to get involved with ITA courses over my 5 years at the University of South Florida (USF). Who does not want a class of driven graduate students, I thought? Who does not want a change of pace? When I received the teaching assignment in August, I reviewed the skills and objectives, concluding that what was in store for me was fabulous: a mixture of pronunciation, pragmatics, and teaching preparation. Fantastic. Teaching textbooks? I had studied them in my Master’s program. Pronunciation textbooks? Lots of those skills in our academic English textbooks, or my previous work teaching accent reduction courses. Pragmatics? Fascinating departure from our usual focus on written academic texts. I thought carefully about these aspects of our ITA class, but not about the seemingly straightforward precondition which would place learners in my course. Requirements What are our requirements at USF for the ITA course? How did students land in my class? The syllabus laid it out clearly for me at the start of the semester: They are graduate students with teaching assistantships, across numerous disciplines, with a TOEFL speaking subscore of 20–25. This is the only requirement. It means that a student could, hypothetically, have achieved a TOEFL score of 24 as a high school student, successfully flourished and graduated from an American university with an undergraduate degree, and still enroll in our course as a precondition for a teaching assistantship. Another student in the class might have received a hard-earned score of 20 and be in their first month of living in the USA. Another may have taken the TOEFL too long ago for the score to be considered valid, but opted to not spend money on retaking a test. The numbers hide so much that is relevant; some students may have had many years of teaching experience in their fields; others may have no teaching experience at all. Some students may be managing a lab section; others may be teaching large lecture-based courses or online. Some have noticeable issues with pronunciation and comprehension; others may speak with English that is only distinguishable from standard American pronunciation in terms of nasal liquids that only impact the most contextless pronunciation practice of liminal pairs. This rich variety makes for a wonderful social-learning classroom, but on a regular basis I struggle to find items of relevance to every student during each class practice. Though we have three sections of the ITA course, the students are placed in a section due to scheduling rather than based on other relevant criteria. These rudimentary placement procedures are practical, but disregard the needs and backgrounds of students in terms of their cultural knowledge, teaching experience, and pronunciation needs. Is there not a better way? Going Forward Looking at the requirements of the ITA programs other universities offer, I am in awe. There are in fact multiple other ways to do the important work of preparing international students to teach at our university. Rather than focusing solely on the problems of USF’s ITA class, I’ve widened my scope to consider best practices and practical options already in place at comparable institutions. I see versatility and flexibility: At some colleges, there may be tiers of classes for different levels of TOEFL speaking scores. There may be ways to opt out at the start of the semester despite initial qualification for the course. There may be targeted workshops to select from, focusing on either pronunciation, teaching, or intercultural differences. There may be opportunities for students to display their skills to a panel of experts and test out of the ITA course altogether at various points in the semester. An entire university department may be dedicated toward the mission of educating and supporting ITAs! We have nothing like these support systems or options at USF—yet. At a school increasing in international profile and touting itself as a world university, wouldn’t we logically have some of these options? When ITAs face so many other demands and stressors, is a placement in our class based on one lone TOEFL score really the best way to promote their success? Textbook Issues With these meditations in mind, I found myself listening to student after student recite in their diagnostic recording an authoritative text calling their assistantship position at college a problem. Our class's first experience with the diagnostic paragraph was part of a preloaded learning module of the course’s online component, and it omitted the paragraph’s accusatory title. Even though students may not have seen the title, the content of the paragraph itself was a preview of what was to come. In fact, much of the book’s text, if not the overwhelming majority, has remained the same from its initial publication in 1992; charmingly, the original photographs and references to chalk on a chalkboard remain. While attitudes toward ITAs may still be problematic, a textbook aimed toward giving them classroom skills (including confidence) should not disseminate the view that the audience brings to the table flaws that need to be highlighted. Starting with the content of the diagnostic paragraph, I had a real issue with the book. Do ITAs need to be reminded that “undergraduate students demand fluent and accurate English?” And how true is this in an era where more and more Englishes are gaining validity in the eyes of undergraduate students? How confident can we be in our knowledge of undergraduate intolerance of accents? And is our mission to cater to these hypothetical undergraduates, rather than to educate and prepare them for a global workplace? For the first week of the course, I mulled over this question. Then I turned it over to my students. Critical Inquiry Embracing and encouraging a critical learning environment is something instructors should do in any content area of teaching—I’m part of an interdisciplinary faculty book club with our Academy of Teaching and Learning Excellence currently reading a book (What the Best College Teachers Do, by Ken Bain) dealing with this very subject. The author stresses that keeping a receptive yet critical mindset when encountering any text is key toward successful learning and higher order thinking, and he provides case studies across disciplines illustrating this tenet. Promoting critical thinking of our course material with ITAs has yielded good results in terms of engagement. This semester, ITAs themselves critically examined a few chapters of the textbook at the start of the semester as part of discussion board assignments in my section. What were some useful aspects, and less helpful aspects, of the course book? Happily, right off the bat some of them identified the diagnostic paragraph as promoting outdated views of undergraduate students as uniformly American and intolerant of other accents. Others took their time getting to these aspects and felt hesitant to critique a book, but I highlighted some of the best findings in our live sessions afterward. Productive discussion with actual voices of ITAs ensued. As we debated the content of the textbook on an online platform and later in person, we had an authentic and memorable experience. Through an imperfect procedure and choice of material, an ideal exchange of ideas and promotion of different views resulted. Among others, the ideas of an accent as a gift, and of a text as fallible, emerged completely independent of my influence. Simply opening a forum allowed my learners to advocate for themselves. Final Thoughts However beneficial critical inquiry has proved this semester, I still hold out hope we can change our intake and evaluation practices for the ITA course. I would jump at a chance to use the materials I have seen from other universities, and at this point I feel I have the information necessary to develop our program with an aim to expand, enhance, and improve. Critical inquiry on texts can be accomplished without threatening to deepen any stereotype threats to which people new to teaching and/or new to a U.S.-university environment may be vulnerable. Let’s focus on strengths and targeted intervention when necessary, rather than assuming a deficit and problematizing the existence of ITAs from the start. Melissa Nye is a senior instructor at the University of South Florida English Language Program. She has developed and taught courses there for the past 5 years and is very happy to be formally enabling the success of USF’s ITAs for the first time. |
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