Graduate Teaching Assisstants’ Roles In Online Self-access Learning Center Of College English

Graduate teaching assistant system is a win-win education system, which has beengradually accepted by the universities in China. The system not only promoted thedevelopment of graduate students’ professional skills, but also improved the quality ofundergraduates. As a new concept of teaching, self-access learning has become a generalreform tendency of college English teaching and learning. Many universities have startedEnglish self-access learning and more studies have been done in such field, which has greatlypromoted college English teaching in China. In the self-access language learning center inHunan University, graduate teaching assistants are employed to help teachers do the work,such as checking students’ homework, collecting learning materials and so on. The roles andfunctions of the graduate teaching assistants in self-access language learning center is quite anew subject in this field.The present research involves30graduate teaching assistants as samples，31teachers andtwo big groups (each group contains two classes) from two different schools in HunanUniversity. By employing the research instruments: questionnaires, interviews and classroomobservations, the paper investigates teachers’ understanding of and expectation on thegraduate teaching assistants, and what have graduate teaching assistants actually done in theself-access language learning center. The author aims to employ these three instruments todiscuss the positive influence made by different roles of graduate teaching assistants to theteachers, students, graduate students themselves and even colleges and universities.The major research questions of the study are:1) What roles are graduate teachingassistants expected to play in self-access language learning center? What are the practicalroles that graduate teaching assistants are playing in self-access language learning center?2)What is the gap between the roles that graduate teaching assistants are playing and theexpected roles required by the University, and how to fill? Findings indicate that graduateteaching assistants have not completely met EFL teachers’ expectations. They just helpteacher to maintain the class discipline and check students’ homework or text reciting. Thoseare far from what teachers and students have expected on the graduate teaching assistants.There should be a specific administration office who takes the responsibility of themanagement of graduate teaching assistant system and provide professional training beforethe graduate students become official teaching assistants. An evaluation system for graduateteaching assistants should be set up as soon as possible.