Exploring the Grammatical Complexity of International Teaching Assistants: A Comparative Corpus Study

IF 3 1区文学 Q1 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Tesol Quarterly Pub Date : 2024-08-28 DOI:10.1002/tesq.3349

Heesun Chang, Amin Raeisi‐Vanani

{"title":"Exploring the Grammatical Complexity of International Teaching Assistants: A Comparative Corpus Study","authors":"Heesun Chang, Amin Raeisi‐Vanani","doi":"10.1002/tesq.3349","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this study is to analyze the grammatical complexity features of international teaching assistants' (ITAs) mock‐teaching presentations and to compare the distributions of these features to those found in the Oral English Proficiency Test (a local ITA assessment), university classroom teaching, conversation, and academic writing. The data consisted of 186 prospective ITAs' mock‐teaching presentations collected from two ITA training courses at a large U.S. university: one higher‐level course and one lower‐level course. All presentations were transcribed, proofread, and built into a corpus consisting of 247,043 words. Based on the previous corpus studies, a total of 22 grammatical complexity features were selected for the analysis. Overall, the discourse of ITA mock‐teaching involved a substantial number of both the grammatical complexity features commonly found in spoken conversation (e.g., finite adverbial clauses and modals) and those commonly used in academic writing (e.g., noun premodifiers and prepositional phrases). The frequency distributions of the features differed in complex ways between ITA mock‐teaching and the other registers, as well as between the higher‐level and lower‐level ITAs. Pedagogical implications for ITA training and assessment, and future research directions are discussed at the end.","PeriodicalId":48245,"journal":{"name":"Tesol Quarterly","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tesol Quarterly","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.3349","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the grammatical complexity features of international teaching assistants' (ITAs) mock‐teaching presentations and to compare the distributions of these features to those found in the Oral English Proficiency Test (a local ITA assessment), university classroom teaching, conversation, and academic writing. The data consisted of 186 prospective ITAs' mock‐teaching presentations collected from two ITA training courses at a large U.S. university: one higher‐level course and one lower‐level course. All presentations were transcribed, proofread, and built into a corpus consisting of 247,043 words. Based on the previous corpus studies, a total of 22 grammatical complexity features were selected for the analysis. Overall, the discourse of ITA mock‐teaching involved a substantial number of both the grammatical complexity features commonly found in spoken conversation (e.g., finite adverbial clauses and modals) and those commonly used in academic writing (e.g., noun premodifiers and prepositional phrases). The frequency distributions of the features differed in complex ways between ITA mock‐teaching and the other registers, as well as between the higher‐level and lower‐level ITAs. Pedagogical implications for ITA training and assessment, and future research directions are discussed at the end.

查看原文本刊更多论文

探索国际助教的语法复杂性：语料库比较研究

本研究旨在分析国际助教（ITA）模拟教学演示文稿的语法复杂性特征，并将这些特征的分布与英语口语水平测试（ITA的一项本地评估）、大学课堂教学、会话和学术写作中的语法复杂性特征进行比较。数据包括 186 份未来 ITA 的模拟教学演示，这些演示来自美国一所大型大学的两门 ITA 培训课程：一门高级课程和一门低级课程。所有演示文稿均经过誊写、校对，并建立了一个由 247,043 个单词组成的语料库。根据以往的语料库研究，共选择了 22 个语法复杂性特征进行分析。总体而言，ITA 模拟教学的话语涉及大量口语会话中常见的语法复杂性特征（如有限副词从句和情态动词）和学术写作中常用的语法复杂性特征（如名词前置修饰语和介词短语）。ITA模拟教学和其他语域之间，以及高级ITA和低级ITA之间，这些特征的频率分布存在着复杂的差异。最后还讨论了国际英语教师培训和评估的教学意义以及未来的研究方向。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Tesol Quarterly Multiple-

CiteScore

6.40

自引率

6.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： TESOL Quarterly, a professional, refereed journal, was first published in 1967. The Quarterly encourages submission of previously unpublished articles on topics of signiﬁcance to individuals concerned with English language teaching and learning and standard English as a second dialect. As a publication that represents a variety of cross-disciplinary interests, both theoretical and practical, the Quarterly invites manuscripts on a wide range of topics, especially in the following areas: -psychology and sociology of language learning and teaching -issues in research and research methodology -testing and evaluation -professional preparation -curriculum design and development -instructional methods, materials, and techniques -language planning -professional standards Because the Quarterly is committed to publishing manuscripts that contribute to bridging theory and practice in our profession, it particularly welcomes submissions that address the implications and applications of research in, for example, -anthropology -applied and theoretical linguistics -communication education -English education, including reading and writing theory -psycholinguistics -psychology -ﬁrst and second language acquisition -sociolinguistics The Quarterly prefers that all submissions be written in a style that is accessible to a broad readership, including those individuals who may not be familiar with the subject matter. TESOL Quarterly is an international journal. It welcomes submissions from English language contexts around the world.