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TEACHING ASSISTANT PROGRAMS Michigan State University
MSU is an affirmative-action equal opportunigy institution |
MICHIGAN STATE U N I V E R S I T Y May 12, 2004 To Whom It May Concern: It is my pleasure to write this letter of reference on behalf of Leslie Watson who worked as a tutor in the TEAM Program. The TEAM program is an accent reduction program which uses cutting-edge technology to teach international teaching assistants to improve their own accent and pronunciation, while developing the listening and evaluation skills to continue improvement after their participation in the program is over. The TEAM software uses a multi-media approach and tutors become proficient with the recording, analysis, and evaluation of the quality of spoken language. It is aimed at helping mostly Asian students prepare to teach in American classrooms. During tutoring sessions, the tutor plays audio files of sample English utterances spoken by native speakers for the student, who then repeats the utterance while the tutor records. The student's recorded utterances are analyzed by the software, which then generates visual displays that allow the analysis of such qualities as . intonation, phrasing, loudness, and vowel and consonant production. Then, the tutor helps the student to compare and evaluate both recordings and visual displays that the software has generated from the inputs. Thus, the tutor helps the student use various media to evaluate and improve his or her accent and pronunciation. Leslie worked with the international graduate students in the T A Program in. . Summer 1999, Fall 1999 and Summer 2000. She was an enthusiastic and reliable tutor. We are grateful for her support. I recommend Leslie Watson for your consideration. Sincerely, Zeynep Altinsel
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