Designing and Implementing the TESOL Teaching Practicum Abroad: Focus on Interaction ZUZANA TOMAŠ, RAI FARRELLY, and MARA HASLAM University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah, United States Ⅲ The practical teaching course, also known as the practicum, is an essential component in graduate TESOL programs in the United States (Bailey, 2006; Crandall, 2000; Stoynoff, 1999) The rationale behind this course is to allow preservice teachers the opportunity “to acquire the practical skills and knowledge needed to function as effective language teacher[s]” (Richards & Crookes, 1988, p 9) Traditionally, practicum program participants consist of a practicum supervisor, preservice teachers, mentor teachers, and language learners We feel, however, that the traditional practicum course suffers in some ways because groups of participants not interact sufficiently One noteworthy absence of interaction is that between practicum supervisors and mentor teachers, even though this interaction is considered a critical element of the practice teaching experience (Richards & Crookes, 1988) Typically, supervisors facilitate the selection of mentor teachers and schools but, beyond that, may visit the schools only to assess the preservice teachers’ activities once a semester The fact that preservice teachers in campus-based practica are often not supervised in the actual language classrooms in which they are observing, assisting, and eventually teaching is problematic First, their university supervisors have no control over the quality of training that preservice teachers receive in the schools Additionally, the supervisors are limited in the amount of feedback and support they can give to the preservice teachers about their teaching in the cooperating classrooms Another type of interaction often lacking in richness in the campusbased practicum is that between preservice teachers Although some practicum programs encourage preservice teachers to give each other feedback through peer response, preservice teachers are not generally able to engage in intensive observations of each other’s work in the cooperating classroom or to collaborate on lesson planning One approach to increasing interaction between different practicum participants is to increase the authenticity of the practicum setting by, for example, offering the practicum outside the United States in an EFL context This approach gives preservice teachers the opportunity to develop their teaching practices collaboratively while engaging with real language learners daily in authentic EFL classrooms Additionally, pre660 TESOL QUARTERLY service teachers are afforded a rich cross-cultural experience and the chance to share their language and culture with students who may never have visited the United States In this brief article, we describe an innovative on-site practicum model developed at the University of Utah, implemented in the Czech Republic in summers of 2007 and 2008, and with plans to continue in the summer of 2009 AN INNOVATIVE PRACTICUM MODEL In collaboration with our Eastern European colleagues, we developed a practicum course held on-site in the Czech Republic This on-site practicum course offered by the Linguistics Department at the University of Utah was conducted within a larger project, called Project New Eyes The program’s main focus was on students’ development of intercultural communication skills, with teacher education as a secondary focus The 3-week on-site program took place during a summer semester in Sušice, a small town located in the Czech Republic The program adopted a community-immersion approach; thus, all 19 university participants lived with Czech host families free of charge, in exchange for communicating with them in English Preservice teachers were also expected to assist with EFL instruction at local schools in the morning and provide English language support to local businesses in the afternoon Training and Professional Development Prior to their departure for the Czech Republic, preservice teachers received a half-day workshop which addressed topics such as modified speech for the second language (L2) classroom, appropriate delivery of instructions, and lesson planning In the Czech Republic, the preservice teachers were divided into three cohorts, each supervised by one of the three practicum supervisors—the coauthors of this article The practicum supervisors were responsible for making contact with local schools that had expressed an interest in having practicum students in their EFL classes Once schools and mentor teachers were identified, we negotiated preservice teachers’ involvement in the classrooms In addition to their work in classrooms and cohort sessions, preservice teachers responded to a set of journal prompts that targeted their experiences in the classroom They also had the opportunity to discuss their observations and teaching experiences with their peers and supervisors in various informal situations (e.g., over lunch) as well as more formal situations (e.g., during cohort meetings) Cohort groups met with their TEACHING ISSUES 661 supervisor for hour three times a week During a weekly combined cohort meeting, the practicum supervisors collaborated to lead an additional 90-minute session devoted to continuing teacher training In addition to attending cohort meetings, preservice teachers were required to participate in professional development workshops with Czech EFL teachers In these workshops, preservice teachers had further opportunities to learn about language teaching as they were introduced to topics such as student and teacher roles in the language classroom, teaching target culture to EFL students, trends in teaching grammar, and trends in teaching vocabulary They also benefited from the ideas and expertise of the Czech EFL teachers as they participated in collaborative activities in each workshop For their part, the Czech teachers benefited from the opportunity to speak English with the preservice teachers in these workshops They reported that this opportunity provided a major motivation for attending the workshops Increased Interaction Course evaluations from Project New Eyes revealed that the preservice teacher participants experienced lively and intense interactions because of the many opportunities for interactive learning provided by the practicum As a result, they built strong relationships with one another, with their supervisor(s), and with the Czech participants in the program (mentor teachers, L2 learners, and host families) Unlike home campus-based practica, the preservice teachers taking this practicum course often supported each other by visiting each others’ classrooms These classroom visits also provided opportunities for the preservice teachers to expand their observational experience and provide their peers with informal feedback They also frequently collaborated on lesson planning and even team-taught classes together As practicum supervisors, we experienced intensified interaction with one another as well, which enhanced our professional development as teacher educators We met regularly to discuss our expectations for the preservice teachers enrolled in the practicum We prepared several workshops, which we copresented to the enrolled preservice teachers both prior to departure and in the Czech Republic We delegated responsibilities and made contacts with Czech EFL teachers We met weekly on-site to prepare cohort sessions and workshops, to design journal prompts, to grade, and to resolve unexpected issues Following the program, the interactions continued as we presented an overview of the program to our department and prepared to present our ideas at TESOL In addition to the enriched interaction we experienced among our662 TESOL QUARTERLY selves, we were struck by the intensity of the relationships we formed with the mentor teachers involved On arrival in the Czech Republic, we established direct contact with our in-service colleagues and negotiated expectations for the EFL classroom-based practicum The relationships continued to evolve as we spent time in the EFL classrooms, watching our preservice teachers as they delivered their lessons Almost all the cooperating teachers participated in the workshops we prepared, and two of them accepted an invitation to present at one of the workshops According to Richards and Crookes (1988), “the success of the practice teaching experience depends on the kinds of liaisons and communication established between the supervisor and the [mentor] teacher” (p 21) These relationships afforded us the trust to provide guidance to the mentor teachers as they served as models and mentors for the preservice teachers Compared with the typical experience of preservice teachers in campus-based practica, the interactions between the preservice and cooperating EFL teacher-mentors proved fruitful and intense The EFL teachers provided preservice teachers with considerable support and involved them actively in the classroom In many cases, the EFL teachers allowed them to deliver the majority of the lessons, claiming that this was their students’ first opportunity to be exposed to authentic American English The option to teach entire lessons provided an opportunity for the preservice teachers to get to know their students, thus allowing a greater sense of where the learners were having difficulties (Johnson, 1996) The preservice teachers further reported that the many chances to teach allowed them to discover their own teaching styles CONCLUSION We feel that intense and supportive interaction among practicum participants is one key to successful L2 teacher education Based on our on-site experience, one possible adjustment to the campus-based model would be to cultivate a richer relationship between practicum supervisors and mentor teachers In this model, an ongoing dialogue between these key participants shapes the involvement of the preservice teachers in the schools by negotiating expectations and roles of the preservice teachers in the classrooms Thus, the role of the supervisor becomes considerably more than that of a one-shot evaluator, who visits the school only for assessment purposes This collaborative working relationship may present supervisors as well as mentor teachers with additional opportunities to provide enhanced guidance and feedback to the preservice teachers We feel strongly that more active involvement of the practicum superviTEACHING ISSUES 663 sors in the schools would positively impact the overall experience of all participants in the program ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Professor Steven R Sternfeld, founder and director of Project New Eyes, whose passion for the program and for supporting doctoral students was integral to this rewarding experience, and Professor Stacey Katz for providing us with feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript In addition, we want to extend our sincere gratitude to the families, students, teachers, and community at large in Sušice, Czech Republic, and the surrounding towns and villages, who so graciously welcomed us into their lives THE AUTHORS Zuzana Tomaš is currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States, where she is conducting research in the area of L2 teacher education and L2 writing Zuzana is a recipient of the Ruth Crymes Fellowship for Graduate Study and Mary Finocchiaro Award for Excellence in the Development of Pedagogical Materials Rai Farrelly is currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States, where she is investigating the impact of literacy on language acquisition In addition, she is developing a curriculum for language teacher education with particular focus on educational issues related to adult refugee populations Mara Haslam is currently pursuing a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, United States, specializing in second language phonology She also has extensive experience with teacher education and supervision REFERENCES Bailey, K (2006) Language teacher supervision: A case-based approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Crandall, J J (2000) Language teacher education Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 20, 34–55 Johnson, K E (1996) The vision versus the reality: The tensions in the TESOL practicum In D Freeman & K C Richards (Eds.), Teacher learning in language teaching (pp 30–49) New York: Cambridge University Press Richards, J C., & Crookes, G (1988) The practicum in TESOL TESOL Quarterly, 22, 9–27 Stoynoff, S (1999) The TESOL practicum: An integrated model in the U.S TESOL Quarterly, 33, 145–151 664 TESOL QUARTERLY