This study intended to answer questions about the undergraduate students’ overall perceptions and concerns about the GTA-instructed English laboratory course.
According to the results derived from the student survey, GTAs received relative high student ratings on being well-prepared, enthusiastic, and encouraging. The students also agreed positively that the assessment and grading systems
feel that the class was stimulating, the textbook was well used, or the educational experience was satisfactory. Besides, the students’ slightly negative responses regarding the two statements that asked whether they would take the ELL if it was not required, and whether the students looked forward to coming to class, indicate a somewhat low degree of overall course satisfaction. Moreover, the students did not agree that they actively participated in class discussion.
Although the students generally agreed that the GTAs were well-prepared, enthusiastic, and approachable, they felt less positive about the GTAs’ quality of instruction particularly in areas of lesson planning, teaching techniques, material design, and classroom interaction. They also felt that their GTAs were not adequately trained and knowledgeable in the use of the lab equipment, which may be one of the reasons why the students were somewhat dissatisfied with the overall ELL experience. As Lavine (1992) proposed, instructors who are not comfortable with the lab equipment will not be able to effectively motivate students to use a language laboratory.
Therefore, it is recommended that future GTA training programs should include both pedagogical and lab skills training in order to successfully fulfill their ELL instructional responsibilities. So GTAs are aware of the variety of useful strategies to address student needs and take fullest advantage of the lab equipment for teaching English. Moreover, on-site technical personnel should be provided to keep the technological problems to a minimum level in order to ensure
the effectiveness of ELL instruction.
In terms of the overall ELL experience, the students responded somewhat negatively to the survey questionnaire statements: I looked forward to coming to class (M = 2.94), and I would have taken this course even if it was not required (M = 2.83). On the other hand, the students rated the overall course experience somewhat high (M = 3.29). Such a discrepancy in perceptions may be attributed partially to the GTAs’ enthusiasm, vitality, and approachability which can often prevail over pedagogical weaknesses (Smith, 2004) despite aforementioned inadequate pedagogical training. The instructor’s positive characteristics can also generate involvement of and build rapport with students.
The GTAs seemed to lack pedagogical skills required of ELL instruction to tackle the weaknesses in course planning, material organization, activity development, and classroom management as remarked by the students. The task of planning, organizing, motivating, and maintaining classroom control can be overwhelming for GTAs, who often lack teaching experience and formal training. Thus, adequate training of GTAs to be familiar with the strengths and limitations of the ELL instruction is essential for providing a positive English learning experience for students. With intensive training, GTAs can become more competent in their teaching, more responsive to student needs, more able to cope with specific problems they might encounter, and build confidence related to classroom practices (Luo et al., 2000).
training before they begin the ELL instructional duties.
Meeting periodically with faculty supervisors following their classroom visits by pinpointing specific teaching incidents and problems is imperative to enhance lab instruction skills.
In summary, suggestions for improving GTAs’
pedagogical skills are proposed below for future GTA training programs. First, English lab GTAs should be trained for more EFL teaching techniques and strategies for teaching functional aspects of English in the language laboratories. Second, a mentorship with TEFL faculty is also suggested for the mentor to model pedagogical techniques and to provide helpful feedback on GTA teaching performance. Mid- and end-of-semester teaching performance evaluation forms should be completed by the faculty supervisor. Third, GTAs should be required to attend and critique classes taught by other GTAs, hands-on workshops, and microteaching (Davis and Kring, 2001; Goodlad, 1997; Shannon et al., 1998).
Fourth, GTA training should be expanded to include systematic observation, individualized feedback, and formal discussions by faculty and peers based on actual teaching sessions in order to foster language lab teaching effectiveness.
As noted by Chism (1993), systematic reflection can help improve instruction. Nyquist and Wulff (1996) also contended that the instructor should learn to deeply reflect about his or her practice to help them make better future teaching decisions.
Thus, teaching portfolios consisting of personal information, the philosophy of teaching, teaching experiences, teaching
development activities and other relevant information should be compiled and teaching journals should be kept to promote GTAs’ teaching skills and professional development.
In addition to pedagogical and lab skills, a cardinal factor affecting GTAs’ quality of ELL instruction is their English proficiency. As noted by Medgyes (1994), the non-native English teachers’ command of English plays a considerable role in the success of teaching. The GTAs of this study, though majoring in English, may not possess adequate English proficiency or knowledge about American culture.
According to the results gathered from the interviews, the students expected to learn language functions for meaningful interactions. However, the GTAs tended to focus on vocabulary instruction, which may be because they were more confident in teaching language forms such as vocabulary words and grammatical rules. Furthermore, Horwitz (1996) pointed out that English teachers are also English learners;
therefore, they need to continue improving their English proficiency to meet the language demands posed by classroom teaching. Hence, language improvement should be a foremost aim of GTA training. To help GTAs advance their English and communicative competence, regular language trainings or tutorials may be needed so that GTAs can communicate more competently and effectively in English with their students.
Finally, it was indicated in the interviews that the varying roles of a peer and of a teacher that the GTAs play in the ELL were confusing to the students. Therefore, GTAs need to be aware
students’ possible reactions, and to be able to switch appropriately between the various roles (Brown, 2001; Gower et al., 2005; Harmer, 2001).
CONCLUSION
This study is significant because it explores students’
perceptions of and concerns about GTA instruction of the English lab course in an EFL context. On a pragmatic level, this study can benefit GTA trainers by providing information about student concerns and opinions about GTA instruction.
Future GTA training programs can thus focus on the specific instructional problems pointed out by this study and provide successful strategies for preventing these problems from happening. This study, however, has two specific limitations.
First, although many students in this study were favorable about the GTAs’ teaching performance, including a comparison group of full-time ELL teaching assistants may help to examine the strengths and weaknesses of both groups.
The findings derived from such a comparison would offer further insights into the GTAs’ abilities and even strengthen the evaluation for GTA effectiveness. Second, this study explored the GTAs of the ELL course who assumed full instructional responsibilities in an EFL context; therefore, its findings may not be generalizable to all GTAs taking on partial instructional responsibilities or participating in
academic disciplines other than EFL. In conclusion, by triangulating data from questionnaires and interviews, this study found, from the students’ perceptions, GTAs’ strengths and weaknesses in ELL instruction. The strengths included teaching enthusiasm and well-preparedness, and the weaknesses were in course planning, lab skills, classroom management, and command of English. Findings of this study may offer insights into GTA training in areas of instructional techniques and strategies, teaching evaluation, peer observation, systematic teaching reflection, and development of English competence.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to sincerely thank the anonymous ETL reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier version of this paper.
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