CMLL Highlighted InitiativeInternational Teaching Assistant Program
OVerview
The teaching assistantship (TA) or graduate part-time instructorship (GPTI) is the university's way of assisting the graduate student in the pursuit of advanced education and in meaningful entry into the professional world. Teaching assistants and graduate part-time instructors make an important contribution to the teaching mission of the university. The TA or GPTI is both student and employee. They are continually involved, as students, in the scholarship of their discipline. As students, they have a natural understanding of the needs and perspectives of other students, which enhances their role as employee. For More information, view:
OP 64.03: Graduate Students Employed as Teaching Assistants and Graduate Part-Time Instructors
Department Specifics
The CMLL International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Program evaluates all Texas Tech University nonnative speakers of English for approval to teach in accordance with OP 64.03. TTU departments must arrange for all nonnative speakers of English who will teach in their classrooms to be evaluated for proficiency in English for teaching by the TTU ITA Program. Candidates may be evaluated via the ITA Summer Workshop (virtual), Special Interview (virtual), ESL 5310, or ESL 5312.
Information for Faculty and Advisors
International Teaching Assistant Workshop Information
The workshop is designed to provide English training and classroom communication skills for ITA candidates, as well as evaluations of candidates’ speaking and listening English proficiency.
All international students with teaching assignments whose spoken English proficiency has not already been evaluated and approved by ITA training program staff are required to attend the workshop.
ITA Workshop Coordinator: Carla Burrus, CMLL Graduate Program Coordinator
carla.burrus@ttu.edu
Notification of ITA Training Program
Please e-mail all attending teaching assistant candidates information to Carla Burrus as soon as possible. Include student's e-mail address, phone number and contact information for their advisor.
If your student is newly arrived and will be residing on campus during the workshop, please include date and approximate time of arrival to campus in your e-mail to Carla Burrus. Please also list students as "Ms./Mr.", for housing purposes.
Screening caveats for all faculty members making decisions about English proficiency
The TOEFL total test score frequently does not include a spectrum score nor a listening sub-score and is therefore not a helpful indicator.
For admissions decisions at the departmental level, advisors should insist on students disclosing their subtest scores such as the speaking or listening subtests. On the TOEFL, speak subtest scores below 24 suggests the ITA candidate will need to spend a semester or more in ESL classes before they have sufficient English to teach.
Tests such as the IELTs or Celta also offer subtest scores. If the speaking or listening subtest scores are substantially lower than writing or reading scores, it would be unfair to assume an ITA candidate will arrive "ready to teach".
Screening by telephone is not a good idea. There is no security (another student could be 'replacing' the interviewee; the interviewee may be being coached or may be reading.) Also, a person who is not trained in oral proficiency interviewing is not likely to know how to control the interview or to know what genuinely represents proficiency. It is also unfair to the interviewee, who has all of his or her non-verbal communication resources stripped away.
Department faculty members are not ideal assessors of the English proficiency of their international teaching assistants. This is because faculty members, like their ITAs, are extensively and intensively schooled in a given field. This makes it possible for them to understand what their ITAs are saying because they share a rich context of meaning. Faculty members are sometimes surprised that what was perfectly clear to them during a student presentation was incomprehensible to everyone else in the audience not immersed in the field. ITAs need to be comprehensible to freshmen students.
Faculty members are not ideal assessors, also, because there is a profound difference between the ability of a student to maintain chat with a professor during office hours and the ability to maintain long periods of sustained discourse about academic topics in a classroom or laboratory setting.
As of January 2026, TOEFL scores are reported using a new 1–6 scoring scale. The scores shown below represent the equivalent conversions from the previous 0–120 scale, based on the official TOEFL concordance table.
Approval to Teach for International Teaching Assistants
Texas Tech University Operating Policy 64.03 requires that the appointment of all nonnative English-speaking students (regardless of visa/residency status) as teaching assistants be made only after certification of English proficiency and readiness for the classroom.
There are three options for evaluation for approval to teach:
- The International Teaching Assistant Workshop (no longer includes an initial interview)
- ESL 5310 or ESL 5312
- Special/Zoom Interview (for eligible students only)
- The August interviews are typically only offered for students registered for the ITA Workshop who were not able to attend due to unforeseen travel delays.
With the exception of ESL 5310 and ESL 5312, students must be registered for any assessment by their department.
To receive regular information about how to register for assessment opportunities and to be informed of pertinent deadlines, please be sure that you are on the ITA Program email distribution list for faculty and staff.
Zoom Interview Assessment Procedures
Newly-arriving international students not yet in Lubbock may be eligible for a Zoom
Interview Assessment Procedure. The objective of this interview is to identify newly
arriving students whose English proficiency meets the required standard for approval
to teach and who would likely be exempted from attending the ITA Summer Workshop.
Zoom Interview Assessment Candidates must be registered by their graduate advisors
after careful consideration of any official evidence they have that the ITA candidate
would likely pass the ITA Program tests, such as high speaking subtest scores on the
TOEFL test (24 or above on the speaking subtest) or records of interviews you have
had with them in English during the admissions process. More evidence than “I could
understand him or her fine” while talking about mutual research interests needs to
be provided. Eligible students whose graduate advisors provide the necessary proof
of criteria can refer to the ITA Workshop Calendar.
For additional information of help contact: Carla Burrus
Classical & Modern Languages & Literatures
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Address
CMLL Building, 2906 18th St, Lubbock, TX 79409 -
Phone
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Email
webmaster@ttu.edu