A study was conducted to determine whether graduate teaching assistants in speech communication were aware of the affective components of their classroom behavior and of the student responses to them, and whether the instructors' awareness of the affective dimensions of instruction related to the student evaluative responses. Subjects were 640 students enrolled in 30 sections of a basic communication course taught by 18 instructors. During the last week of a semester, the students were administered the Index of Teachers' Affective Communication (ITAC), along with the objective teacher evaluation instrument traditionally used by the university. In separate circumstances, the teaching assistant in each course section was asked to examine the ITAC and predict what the mean student response would be for each of the items on the measure. The results suggested that the teaching assistants had poor sensitivity as to how they were perceived by their students. While most instructors scored well on the ITAC according to their students, many were unable to predict their scores. The results support the generalized use of the ITAC as an effective evaluation instrument of classroom communication. (FL)