Requirements for International Teaching Assistants (ITAs)

Handbook for ITAs

If English is not your first language you must take the T-BEST.

All international graduate students wanting to be hired as Graduate Assistants in Teaching (GATs) who have scored below 26 points in the Speak section of the TOEFL iBT test are required to take the Task-Based English Speaking Test or T-BEST designed to measure your ability to communicate in English. Please use the following link to register for the test. An email message will be sent back to you confirming the location, date and time of your appointment to take this online test. A $60 fee for the T-BEST test will be charged to your bursar's account.

If for any reason you wish to improve your pronunciation prior to taking or re-taking the TBEST, the Graduate College offers courses through the Center for English as a Second Language.  CESL also offers tutoring programs.  Program and services for International Graduate Teaching Assistants, including information on College Teaching for International Teaching Assistants (GRAD 697d), and Pronunciation for International Students (697e) can be found at www.cesl.arizona.edu/pronunciation.html.

Part-time programs are also available through CESL for better accomodation of your schedule.  Please refer to the following URL for more information: http://www.cesl.arizona.edu/PartTimeOptions.htm.

Sign up for the T-BEST (At this time there are no TBEST sessions scheduled.)

We want to invite you to participate in a T-BEST study conducted by Dr. Jun Liu, Head of the English department at UA, to norm the responses of international graduate students to T-BEST and to determine the extent to which T-BEST and TOEFL-iBT scores are correlated. By agreeing to participate, you would authorize the Graduate College to submit your T-BEST scores, TOEFL scores, and other non-identifying information (i.e., your gender, major, country of origin, native language, months you lived in an English-speaking country and years of English training) but not your name, date of birth, student identification number, voice recording or any other personal information, to Dr. Liu for further research. Your participation in the study is thus confidential and totally voluntary, and will not require any additional time beyond the 10 minutes needed for you to take the T-BEST. On the other hand, your refusing to participate will have no effect on your graduate status, your employment as GAT, or any other matter at the University of Arizona. When you sign up to take the test, you will be presented with a consent form and asked if you agree to participate.

Learn more about the TBEST