Date of Graduation
12-2018
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Education in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MEd)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Curriculum and Instruction
Advisor/Mentor
Lincoln, Felicia F.
Committee Member
Bowles, Freddie A.
Second Committee Member
Liang, Xinya
Keywords
English as a Second Language; Higher Education; Intelligibility; International Teaching Assistants; Pedagogical Skill
Abstract
The University of Arkansas is a large, diverse public university. International teaching assistants (ITAs) represent 20% of the total graduate teaching assistants at the University of Arkansas. In the Fall semester of 2015, the University of Arkansas ranked 9th among U.S. universities based on the number of ITAs instructing undergraduate classes. Combining quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis methods, this study investigated domestic undergraduate students’ perceptions of their ITAs and of themselves in courses instructed by ITAs. The descriptive quantitative findings showed that the two most significant challenges facing ITAs are American students’ perceptions of their pedagogical skills and their intelligibility, in that order. The hypothesis testing from the inferential quantitative analysis resulted in two rejected hypotheses and eight supported hypotheses. The rejected hypotheses showed that students from medium-sized cities have significantly more positive perceptions of ITAs than students from big cities; and female students have significantly more positive perceptions of ITAs than male students. The supported hypothesis indicated that significance differences among students’ perceptions of their ITAs are not moderated by the diversity of their neighborhood backgrounds; the diversity of the high schools they attended; the colleges they were enrolled in; year of enrollment; GPA; age; prior cross-cultural experiences; and number of courses with ITAs. The qualitative findings showed that although the student found one of her ITAs unintelligible, she generally favors ITAs over ATAs.
Citation
Hanayeen, N. (2018). Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of Their International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) and Perceptions of Themselves in a Course(s) Instructed by an ITA. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3073