Academic Commons

This task aimed to explore the naturally occurring interactions between ITAs and their students in authentic settings of classrooms (recitation sessions), labs (physics and chemistry), and TA offices (individual consultations during TA office hours).  ITAs and their students gave their consent to having their teaching and learning recorded. The recordings were subsequently transcribed using conversation analysis conventions. The overall objective was to identify how the ITAs handle the following challenging areas of communicative competence:

• Intelligibility: What are the ITAs' noticeable challenges in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, stress, intonation?
• Interaction:  How do the ITAs handle turn-taking, pausing, initiating topic, initiating clarifications (repairs), responding to questions, responding to comments, constructing extended turns, episodic transitions?
• Interpersonal: Do the ITAs display attention, employ conventional registers (task-specific styles of speaking), achieve rapport with students, show concern, and display appropriate confidence?
• Ideas:  How do the ITAs manage expert topics and everyday topics?