It has been estimated that over three-fifths of modern English words have their roots in Greek, Latin, and the Romance languages. This workshop will introduce some practical activities for teachers to incorporate common English word roots into their discussion classes. It is hoped that these activities will help students remember more of the words they learn, see some of the patterns in the English lexicon, and give them practice speaking.

The presenters’ university’s self-access lounge offers an opportunity for intercultural community-building and English-speaking practice outside the classroom. English Chat Time (ECT) sessions are supervised by full-time teachers, but mainly conducted by international teaching assistants (TAs), who are not required to be from English-speaking countries. This presentation analyzes the ECT program from the perspectives of the teachers who are contractually required to oversee the sessions, suggesting ways to improve teacher efficacy in other self-access conversation lounges.

Classes led by international graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) impact first-year undergraduate students’ understanding of the world, their motivation to study and use English, and the expansion of their imagined L2 communities. Through analysis of qualitative data, this presentation encourages the utilization of NNS graduate student TAs from developing countries to broaden students’ knowledge about culture, customs, and issues in other countries, and to expose students to contexts and models of using English as a lingua franca.

The presenter will address the result of a case-study which investigates how and what kinds of assistance are provided among low-proficiency high school learners, the teacher, and other learners in an EFL classroom setting in order to make a good learning community. The presenter will share what triggers scaffolding to occur, what types of scaffolding occur, and how learners and the teacher scaffold learning during classroom activities.