Language teaching assistant

A language teaching assistant enters an Australian primary or secondary school and assists a teacher in developing and delivering bilingual language lessons to the children. As a native speaker of the target language you will be of great help to the teacher and the students.

Benefits

You will have an opportunity to meet and work with teachers and staff at a primary or secondary school. This will help to build your conversational skills and give you invaluable experience in a professional workplace. You will also get to meet and interact with Australian school children and this can be a fun and rewarding way of improving your English. You will mostly be communicating with staff in English.

For the teachers and staff that you assist, they will have an opportunity to practice their own language skills with you, a native speaker. You’ll also be able to give the students, and staff, an opportunity to hear native accents and intonation and use authentic everyday vocabulary.  You will also be able to share your culture with both staff and students.

Tasks

You will be expected to assist in the preparation and delivery of lessons. This means you’ll help teachers prepare classroom materials, activities and games that help the children to improve their skills in the target language – your language. You will be given an opportunity to teach the children and be guided and supported in the process by the school staff.

Qualities

The most important quality you will need is to enjoy working with children. It will be also very helpful to keep an open mind and be willing to try out new things. Teaching and preparing activities and materials doesn’t always go according to plan so you’ll need to not get too worried or upset if things don’t go perfectly. You need to be flexible, participatory and proactive.