University Teaching Assistants at Université Paris Cité : Roles and Responsibilities

Your contract requires you to work for 300 hours for the year, which comes to around 12 hours of teaching per week, with semesters lasting for 12 weeks.

You will be teaching for three of the five days per week for both semesters, and you will conduct exams in January, May and June (see calendar).

Teaching assistants generally teach communication and listening skills in their classes. These take the form of conversation classes and sessions in the language lab. Prior knowledge of phonetics, the phonetic alphabet and phonology is an asset for these classes. Teaching assistants who do not have these principles can learn about them during the weeklong crash course. You can also use your time over the summer to familiarize yourself with the English phonetic alphabet by reading Peter Roach’s English Phonetics and Phonology.
You may be assigned classes from any of the undergraduate and graduate levels. You will be duly informed by the person in charge of conversation for the year group in question. Meetings are often scheduled with the year group directors to discuss the syllabus, course content, evaluations, and issues that may arise. Teaching assistants will receive very clear instructions from academic coordinators.
Assistants may at times be asked to teach other types of classes but only if they have the necessary skills. These include literature, art and film studies, creative writing, and translation.

Your conversation and listening classes will primarily comprise of small groups of around 10 students. If you teach other classes, you may have up to 25 to 30 students.

Your work will be supervised by the Department’s English conversation teachers . Our Department boasts a developed system of teamwork which lessens the class preparation workload.

Please state on your CV any experience you may have in teaching English as a foreign language, any knowledge of phonetics/linguistics, skills in literature of English-speaking countries, film studies, art history, creative writing, etc.

For technical reasons, finalized timetables are rarely ready at the start of the academic year. Timetables may be adjusted in the first few weeks of the year.

Please note that teaching assistants are not to leave the Paris region without first informing their supervisor and asking permission.

Your contract begins on September 1, but the academic year begins in mid-September. Please make sure you arrive in Paris for the first week of September so that you have enough time to get settled.

During the second week of September, you will attend a week of crash courses in a range of disciplines. This week of training will allow you to get familiarized with the course content, learn about the campus, and start meeting people.

• 1^st semester: mid-September to mid-December
• 2 weeks of Christmas holidays
• 1^st semester exams: the first two weeks of January
• 2^nd semester: end of January to the end of April, with two weeks of spring break in March or April
• 2^nd semester exams : May
• Exam re-sit period for both semesters : June

You can consult the current year’s academic calendar for the Department of Anglophone Study on this page.

Gross annual salary: €18,588 including health insurance contributions

Net monthly salary: around €1,300 x 12 months

The risks covered by teaching assistants’ health insurance include: healthcare costs, pregnancy and childbirth, hospital stays, workplace injuries and disability (according to the conditions of the social security general regime). Healthcare contributions are included in the gross salary.

However, it is recommended that teaching assistants take out a policy for civil liability (which is an added feature of home insurance policies) and a policy for repatriation expenses.