THE ROLE OF THE LANGUAGE ASSISTANT AT IES ÁNGEL DE SAAVEDRA

The work that the language assistant can do can be classified into two groups:

• To support the teacher's work.

• To programme their own activities in a limited way.

In support of the teacher's work, the assistant will complete, review or help prepare part of the ma-
terial that the teacher needs for his classes. Some examples of the functions that the assistant can
perform are:

• Correction of the material that the teacher has elaborated in L2, verifying the absence of errors
and the use of an appropriate style and register.

• Oral preparation before class. That is to say,a meeting between the assistant and the teacher
can serve as a general rehearsal before a class to check the phonetic correctness of the teacher
in L2 and his capacity of oral expression. With this, we would get that, once the teacher enters
the class, he feels confident about his pronunciation and oral expression, so we minimize the
number of errors of the teacher and we improve the fluidity of the class.

• Search for materials that are part of an activity created by the teacher. For example, if the
teacher has created an activity for which a simple text or certain images are needed, we can ask
our assistant to look for them, after which, the teacher must give his approval and adapt it to the
activity.

• Creation of specific materials. That is tosay,if for a certain activity we need a certain material
that adjusts to some concrete characteristics, as it can be a simple written dialogue or some
recordings about some instructions for an exercise, our auxiliary can elaborate it. Special men-
tion should be made of the recordings for the activities, because it will be a material that can be
used over time, is a model of phonological correction and reduces our dependence on the assis-
tant.

The language assistant can also participate in the elaboration of a didactic unit by programming
his own activities in a limited way. This has the advantage that now it will be the assistant himself
who selects the theme and dynamics of the activities in such a way that we adapt to his own inter-
ests and knowledge.

The most important thing is that the assistant knows all the dynamics of the didactic unit and its
contents in order to be able to incorporate its activities at the appropriate moments, so that the ac-
tivity is related to the subject contents.

Once we have explained the structure of our didactic unit, we can ask the assistant to complete it
through some activity of his own. However, we should ask them to reflect on certain methodologi-
cal aspects of the activity:

Is the content of the activity present in the teaching unit?

Is there a planned evaluation system?

Does the whole class participate or only the most advanced students?
 Do the students participate actively in the activity? (interacting through listening
comprehension and oral expression)

Finally, we must have foreseen the purpose of the activity within the didactic unit:

• Presentation of the topic.

• Introduction of vocabulary.

• Vocabulary review.

• Evaluation.

ORGANISATION OF THE CLASS

The work of the assistant will depend to a large extent on the organization of the class; thus, a
classical structure in which the teacher explains to the students and they perform exercises will
greatly limit the benefits of an assistant in class, since in this way the time of interaction with indi-
vidual students is greatly reduced. On the contrary, amore flexible organization, for example in
groups or circuits, will allow to take advantage of the fact that there are two supervisors of the ac-
tivity, at the same time, that maximizes the time of communication between small groups of stu-
dents with the assistant.

Some examples of organization for the class would be:

• Carrying out projects in groups. In such a way that both the teacher and the assistant would
supervise the activity evolving from group to group according to the needs.

• Carrying out a circuit of activities. So that the students rotate through a series of stations and
the auxiliary is in one of them in which an eminently communicative activity is carried out. In this
way we achieve that the auxiliary interacts with all the students in the class (in shifts) while the
rest of the group carries out other types of activities. The role of the teacher in this type of
activity is the general supervision of the class.

• Division of the class into levels. In other words, two simultaneous lessons would take place in
the same classroom, one supervised by the teacher and the other by the assistant. It is impor-
tant that in the middle of the class the teacher and the assistant are exchanged.

• Division of the class into two different activities. Same as the previous organization, but the
division is not done by levels but two different activities. At the end of the activity, the assistant
and the teacher exchange groups.
THE PERFORMANCE OF THE LANGUAGE ASSISTANT IN THE CLASSROOM

It is very important that teachers design our activities with the help of the Language

Assistant. Some examples are:

• Modelling: the teacher and the assistant demonstrate how a concrete activity should be doneso
that the students can see it before they do it themselves.

• Recording texts: the assistant can record the texts that are going to be used in class (for exam-
ple through SPREAKER), in order to be able to listen to them in the classroom. The same
recorded texts can be used for gap-filling activities, games, memory, dictation,etc.

• Spot the mistake: the assistant reads some text, phrases, etc. that do not contain errors and
the students must detect the errors in the text, phrases, etc. that are printed. They can be lin-
guistic or content errors.

• Explain cultural aspects related to our subject.

• Representation of dialogues.

• Supervision and help during group work: we must provide clear and precise instructions of
what the students must achieve.

• Organization of games in the classroom.

• Error correction: the language assistant is a model of phonetic correctness and grammatical
accuracy. He is also in charge of correcting pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary or register mis-
takes whenever a student (or teacher) makes them.

Others:

 Dynamics for pronunciation practice(repetition of words and expressions of greater diffi-

culty, discrimination of sounds,etc...)

 Evaluation of small tasks(tests, oral tests,etc...)

 Writing on the board expressions and words that are difficult to understand.

 Ask students for complete answers to the questions asked, not partialones.

 Make explicit to the students the criteria on which the evaluation of their linguistic
skills is based(use of correct pronunciation, phrases for oral interaction, correct grammar
and appropriate vocabulary).

Please, find in the next page a document for language assistants to keep a record of their activi-
ties in the classroom. It will help them to prepare their lessons with teachers as well as to give a
feedback about it.
LESSON’S PLAN (18-19)

Date: Teacher: _____

Subject: ___________ Class:
Day: ________ Hour: Nº ofStudents:
Unit / Topic

Activities Resources Grouping Level of satis-

faction with
the lesson and
comments

□ Whiteboard
□ Worksheet
□ PPT (pictures, □ wholeclass
photos,graph-
ics…) □ Smallgroup
(3/4)
□ Music,songs…
□ Video+compre- □ Inpairs
hensionactivity
□ Individually
□ Game
□ Listeningactivity
□ Speakingactivity
□
Others