Letter to Prospective ITAs

Dear Prospective ITA:

The International Teaching Assistant Program would like to welcome you to the University of Connecticut and assist you in meeting the certification requirements for new teaching assistants. All international teaching assistants at the University of Connecticut must demonstrate proficiency in spoken English as defined in the English Language Policy also enclosed with this letter. TAs in the department of Modern and Classical Languages must meet these criteria, however they will not be barred from teaching should they fail the English exam, but will be asked to enroll in the appropriate English course and retest at the end of the semester. The test used to measure spoken English proficiency is the PhonePass SET-10. You will take the Phone Pass test here at UConn (a demo test is available at www.ordinate.com) during the ITA Orientation in order to be certified for teaching in the Fall 2008 semester. We will be conducting an Orientation for all new international TAs on August 11-15, 2008 in the Center for Undergraduate Education building (CUE) in room 122. If you have any questions about the policy, the test or the orientation, please feel free to check our website or email me directly. I look forward to meeting you.

Sincerely,

Catherine Ross, Ph.D.
Associate Director, ITL

catherine.ross@uconn.edu