Functional language in curriculum genres: Implications for testing international teaching assistants

U.S. universities have been employing international teaching assistants (ITAs) for more than thirty years, and their interest in using large-scale language proficiency test scores for the purpose of screening and certification of prospective ITAs has markedly grown. Although previous research generated evidence supporting the validity of such test uses, no studies closely examined the nature of ITAs’ classroom discourse in terms of functional...