International Teaching Assistant Program

International Teaching Assistant Program

Introduction

Welcome to the International Teaching Assistant Program web page. The purpose of this special program for International Teaching Assistants (ITA’s) enhancing participants' language skills, presentation skills, and understanding of American classroom interactions.

Often students who come from other countries can have difficulties in the classes they are assigned to teach. This can have a negative effect on the ITA’s and on their students. It is our sincere desire to help the ITA’s to have the best possible teaching experience in their classrooms. This can only happen if their students have a quality educational experience in the same classroom. Language is often the biggest barrier between effective teaching by ITA’s and their students. It is the purpose of the ITA program to work on language skills so that language is not a factor in the undergraduate students’ getting a quality education.

The ITA Program works with students on their pronunciation, communicative competence as well as cross-cultural communication competence. It is a challenging course, but one that will immensely enhance the quality of education going on in the classroom .

It is our goal to raise the retention level of undergraduate students because they are participating in a quality educational environment and to help the ITA have a quality educational teaching experience. Thus we are trying to enhance the educational quality here at UTSA.

ITA Program Class Requirements (top of page)

In order to be eligible to take the final evaluation, students are expected to have fulfilled the following requirements:

Attendance: students cannot have more than two unexcused absences throughout the semester.
Weekly language lab work: students are expected to work on their specific pronunciation problems following instructor’s recommendations.
Lesson Observations: students are expected to observe two lessons in their department and hand in a post-observation form.
Weekly audio journal: students are expected to record short passages on WebCT and to respond to their peers’ recordings.
Written journal: students are expected to share their entries weekly in class. Additionally, the instructor will collect the journals twice during the semester

The UTSA Oral Language Proficiency Test (OLPT) (top of page)

The OLPT Interview Test measures nonnative English speakers’ oral proficiency. The test consists of 12 questions, each of which is intended to elicit a particular speech activity from test takers. These speech activities are based on language functions such as narrating, apologizing, persuading, recommending, and giving and supporting opinions.

TheOLPT Test is scored with a range of scores from 20- 60, reported in 5-point increments. Students who score 50 or more on the OLPT Interview Test do not have to take the ITA course and are eligible for teaching. Students scoring 49.9 or less will automatically be referred to the ITA course.

Registering students with the ITA Program (top of page)

The procedure by which prospective ITAs are recommended into the ITA program is by direct notification from a representative of an academic department to the ITA program coordinator.

For questions or inquiries, please contact your department at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

International Teaching Assistant Program Fall 2012 Testing Dates (top of page)

UTSA Oral Language Proficiency Test Dates

Date	Day	Time
August 22	Wednesday	9:00-5:00

* Each interview will take approximately 20 minutes to be completed.
On the test day, examinees should bring a picture ID and a pen or pencil. Students must check in at least 20 minutes before the scheduled testing time.

The ITA Language Assessment Results (top of page)

The ITA Language Assessment results will be posted on the ITA Test Results page. For the course registration please contact Darlene Collins at darlene.collins@utsa.edu.