A hallmark of good practice in any profession is the will of
its practitioners to revisit the principles that underlie the choices
they make in their day-to-day work. ITA practitioners know this very
well as we continue to maintain an exceptional level of professional
dedication despite increasingly limited resources and frustrating
reversals in administrative policies. The initial framework that I
describe below was conceived in light of the current situation many of
our programs find themselves in with regard to pedagogical options. As
will be clear, it is a conceptual model and is not designed for
immediate implementation in ITA classrooms; however, I hope it may
encourage discussion on how ITA instruction and applied linguistics may
inform each other’s practice.
Forming ITA Practice
At their initiation in the 1980s, ITA programs were essentially
triage operations. Their shape was largely driven by the growing alarm
of stakeholders in U.S. tertiary education that something was amiss. As
Kaplan (1989) noted at the time, “it came as a great surprise to campus
administrators, legislative bodies and taxpayers that there was a
problem” (pp. 110–111).
In response, program resources were put into place in
institutions to quickly and efficiently qualify this group of
instructors. An English for specific purposes (ESP) focus was typically
employed. Course designs reflected specific disciplines or contexts, and
classroom activities comprised pedagogical tasks designed to mirror the
real-world tasks in which the ITAs were about to engage. Early examples
of literature in the field reflect this focus in ITA training with
titles such as “The Communicative Needs of ITAs in the Undergraduate
Physics Lab,” “The Language of Teaching Mathematics,” and
“Question-Based Discourse in Science Labs.”
In recent years, however, we have been faced with an increasing
shortfall in program support, including the dismantling of some
dedicated ITA programs across the United States. Even large institutions
whose programs have traditionally been at the forefront of ITA research
and development have been targeted for significant reduction or cut
altogether. If we are to be faced as a profession with ever-diminishing
resources, at least in the short term, can we consider alternative
models of practice that can harness fewer resources for greater
good?
The initial framework that I outline here evolves from models
of conversational discourse developed in applied linguistics. It
prioritizes the features used by interlocutors to collaborate in
everyday interaction and proposes that classroom discourse can be
fundamentally reconfigured as a form of conversation in the sense that
it is “a co-operative achievement between at least two participants” and
“involves the study of the use of language in communication and the
relations between linguistic features and contexts of situation” (Tsui,
1994, p. 3). Accordingly, the basic principles of interaction underlying
conversational discourse may be productively accessed by both ITA
practitioners and teaching assistants themselves once we bring them to
the forefront of our practice.
A Conversational Involvement Model
The first iteration of the model comprises three principles
anchored in discourse: the three-part exchange, the underlying dialogic
nature of all spoken discourse, and prosodic orientation in talk. These
principles demonstrate the fundamental ways in which teaching discourse
aligns with interpersonal, conversational discourse. Interacting with
these are two pedagogical or learning principles, metaknowledge and
informal learning, which suggest ways in which discourse-based tenets
might be successfully communicated in the workplace. The model is shown
in Figure 1 and described in detail below.

Figure 1 (click on image to enlarge)
The Three-part Exchange
The three-part exchange is the structure at the heart of the
conversational model proposed by Amy Tsui (1994). This has typically
been regarded as a feature of classroom discourse (i.e., Initiation,
Response, and Feedback, or IRF, sequences) and one that is not
generalizable to conversational discourse which is usually described in
terms of two part adjacency pairs. Tsui argues, however, that the
three-part exchange should be considered the “natural basic unit of
conversation” as interlocutors use the third follow-up move to signal
some kind of acknowledgment such as in the example below:
B: Where is he staying?
A: He’s staying at the ah the Chung Chi Guest House
B: Oh, I see (Tsui, 1994, p. 29)
When viewed in situ, Tsui proposes that the final move (whether
it comprises verbal or nonverbal acknowledgment) is often crucial for
the perceived success of the interaction:
It may be too strong a statement to say that when the follow-up
move does not occur, its non-occurrence is noticeable and noticed in
the way the absence of a second pair part is, but it is certainly true
that when it does not occur, it is often perceived by participants to be
deliberately withheld for social or strategic reasons. (p.
42)
This conceptualization of the basic building block of
successful interaction clearly aligns classroom discourse with
conversational discourse and leads directly to the second principle of
an enhanced view of the dialogic nature of classroom
discourse.
The Dialogic Nature of Spoken Discourse
A distinction has often been made between the transactional
(information-giving) nature of classroom discourse as opposed to the
interactional (rapport-building) nature of conversation. I have argued
elsewhere that this dichotomy does not adequately describe what happens
in the moment-by-moment interaction that typifies the classroom. Rather,
close inspection of the classroom context supports a view of classroom
discourse as a cooperative achievement between participants regardless
of whether the hearer(s) are able to verbally respond to the message. An
example of such a feature is the deictic function of the rising tone
that is often used by teachers to indicate their presumption that the
information they are communicating is shared by the students (Pickering,
2001). From this perspective, teachers are continually in an ongoing
negotiation with students. Thus, teaching discourse becomes a systematic
variant of more overtly dialogic discourse events and restructures the
role of the teacher as a co-participant.
Prosodic Orientation in Talk
This principle is a consistent feature of interaction in
English. Designed to minimize the gap between conversational
interlocutors, it describes the process of melodic or prosodic matching
typical in interaction in which interlocutors match their prosodic
immediacy behaviors such as pitch register, speech rate, rhythm, or
volume to those of their interactants in order to signal a positive
orientation toward their co-participants. This principle is uniquely
important to face-to-face interaction as it establishes shared
participation; conversely, a lack of orientation, or prosodic
mismatching, can signal dissonance or the perceived absence of shared
understanding. One famous example of mismatched conversational prosodic
style is Deborah Tannen’s (2005) “machine gun question talk” in which
the fast pace of speech and frequent overlaps used by some interlocutors
disconcerts others at a Thanksgiving dinner.
Metaknowledge
The behaviors which constitute conversational principles such
as prosodic orientation are largely tacit and, as a rule, participants
are unaware of the crucial role they play in interaction. They are
easily overlooked and yet powerfully affect interactional success when
taken in aggregate and viewed cumulatively over time. Due to the nature
of these features and the need to highlight their role in teaching
discourse, I include a pedagogical or learning principle which I term metaknowledge and by which I mean knowing something
about what you already know or are learning. This is an initial
characterization of how ITA practitioners and ITAs themselves can bring
these conversational behaviors to the surface to be observed and
discussed. It is also closely tied to the second pedagogical principle
of situated learning.
Situated Learning
ITAs are both teachers and students in their workplace; as
such, they are in a unique position to observe the multiple roles that
they and those around them take on in the institution. Traditionally,
however, ITA education has been an example of formal learning in that it
typically takes place in a classroom-based environment that is
controlled by the teacher. In contrast, informal or situated learning is
focused on the learning that takes place in the workplace itself and
derives from the people, activities, and events within which the learner
is immersed. This type of learning is also described as
experience-based learning, incidental learning, and even “karma in the
walls and halls.” In order to become present to situated learning,
learners are encouraged to observe and challenge their experiences in
the workplace and then reflect on them. Crucially, it is self-directed
and occurs when learners “continually scan their environment, heighten
their awareness around learning, pay attention to goals and turning
points, and develop skills of reflection while taking action” (Marsick
& Volpe, 1999, p. 1).
Conclusion
The model of conversational involvement outlined above has
several features that distinguish it from traditional conceptualizations
of ITA practice. The skills that are developed are not domain- and
register-specific, and learners apply the principles in whatever
workplace environment they find themselves in. It is a general purpose
model rather than one based in ESP. However, it is also a model that can
be used in conjunction with more standard ITA curricula as these broad
conversational principles apply independently to interactional success.
Because this is not yet a model designed for implementation, my next
task is to provide a roadmap for how we might integrate these principles
into our day-to-day practice.
Acknowledgments
I thank Gordon Tapper and Kathi Cennamo for fruitful
discussions regarding the current dilemmas faced by ITA programs. I also
thank Pauline Carpenter, an anonymous reviewer, and the organizers and
presenters at the TESOL 2013 ITA Academic Session, “Recent Research
Regarding ITAs: The Dynamics of Interaction,” from which this piece has
evolved.
References
Kaplan, R. (1989). The life and times of ITA programs. English for Specific Purposes, 8(2), 109–124.
Marsick, V. J., & Volpe, M. (1999). The nature and need
for informal learning. Advances in Developing Human Resources,
1(3), 1–9.
Pickering, L. (2001). The role of tone choice in improving ITA
communication in the classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 35,
233–255.
Tannen, D. (2005). Conversational style: Analyzing
talk among friends. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Tsui, A. B. M. (1994). English conversation. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Lucy Pickering is associate professor of applied
linguistics and director of the Applied Linguistics Laboratory in the
Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M-Commerce.
Her interest in ITA research and program development began with her
dissertation research in 1999 in which she investigated the prosodic
patterns of ITAs. Most recently, she co-authored a textbook for ITAs
titled English Communication for International Teaching
Assistants (Waveland Press). |