When should graduate students be tested (Oral Proficiency Assessment) to be eligible to teach?
Even if the graduate student will not be teaching immediately, they should take the Oral Proficiency Assessment (OPA) as soon as possible. Addressing this early will help guarantee that they are eligible to teach whenever they need to. This is helpful for both student and department planning. If they’re certified by this test, they’re ready. If they’re not certified, they can get started on coursework so they’ll be ready when it matters. Delaying testing and classes can result in ineligibility for teaching when the department needs the GTA.
Testing is on Zoom, so students can be tested in the summer before they arrive on campus. If students are not certified through the OPA, they need to take one or more semesters of courses in the Spoken English Program.
Most students will be certified within one calendar year and will be certified to teach by their second year. (Conditionally certified students are eligible for some duties in their first year.)
What are the English language expectations for GTAs?
Certified GTAs should be intelligible and comprehensible for beginning level students in the departments where they will be teaching.
Accentedness is not a barrier to those outcomes as long as their students can adjust to the accent and gain access to the content being taught.
They should be able to communicate flexibly, having sufficient vocabulary and language skills to explain material clearly and efficiently.
Why might undergraduate students have difficulty understanding GTAs?
We certainly expect that students of GTAs will make an effort to understand them, even though they have accented speech. Successful communication is not a one-way street.
It is important to recognize, however, that a person’s background knowledge and familiarity with specialized terminology can affect their ability to understand. For example, a graduate student’s professors or peers may be able to understand them when an undergraduate student might struggle.
What are the goals of Spoken English classes?
Students who enter the program with lower scores may need to do significant work to build their vocabulary, fluency and discourse control in the TLIELP 5040 course, Advanced Spoken English for International Graduate Students (repeatable).
The majority of students who are not certified by the OPA will enter the TLIELP 5050 course, Classroom English for International Graduate Associates. The course will not resemble English courses they have taken in the past.
The focus of this course is to develop skills that help to maintain successful communication in classroom settings. We also work on interaction strategies to maintain or repair communication.
Within the course, discourse intonation is the primary pronunciation emphasis. Our goal is to improve comprehensibility. Our model for pronunciation instruction is based on language features that enhance intelligibility — not a native speaker model. We offer several individualized tutorials throughout the semester based on microteaching (8-minute lessons) practice.
Students in our classes also learn a little about the high school preparation of students and the nature of undergraduate education in the U.S. to better understand their students.
Some students may require additional practice and feedback after attempting the Oral Proficiency Certification Assessment (OPCA), which they can gain through small group meetings in TLIELP 5055, Teaching Workshop for International Graduate Teaching Associates (repeatable).
What language learning challenges may students encounter?
Language acquisition is a complicated matter that is not simply intellectual, but also involves motor skills and perception, which strongly reflect the native language system.
Progress in fluency and grammar may be quite challenging if a speaker’s native language has a different word order.
Listening comprehension involves perception that is initially geared to the cues related to features of a native language for parsing and interpreting sentences. This can make comprehension especially difficult with fast speech.
Pronunciation can be especially challenging. Changes can be slow and require a lot of time and effort. Sounds that are different than one’s native language can be hard to perceive accurately, which can affect a person’s ability to produce the sounds. It also makes monitoring of one’s own pronunciation difficult, which can slow progress. Sound production in English also requires using the speech organs differently and involve fine, complex motor skills.
The rhythm and intonation of English, which have a major impact on intelligibility, are significantly different than those of many other languages. These can be hard to perceive and produce effectively.
What is reasonable progress for a student enrolled in Spoken English?
Scoring on our assessments reflect broad categories of proficiency. For example, moving from a score of 3 to 4 in a single semester is a major achievement and typically unlikely.
Also, if a student receives the same score on two consecutive tests, it does not mean that qualitatively the student hasn’t made progress, perhaps a fair amount of progress.
Students with a fairly strong initial language base may easily attain certification by employing effective compensation strategies and improved discourse intonation. Sometimes simply controlling one’s speech rate can allow listeners to adjust to other accent differences.
Some pronunciation features that are difficult to change but that affect intelligibility may take time to improve. Gradual, consistent progress needs to be recognized.
There are a small number of students who initially lack vocabulary and fluency, which is a major disadvantage for attaining certification. It is probable that it will take them more than a year to be certified. The graduate student setting is not necessarily conducive to speaking English (lectures, reading, writing, research, access to speakers of one’s native language, etc.), especially a broad range of vocabulary and language functions.
