Analysis of the Teacher’s Roles and Functions in English Teaching in Primary School.doc

教师在小学英语教学中的角色和作用分析analysis of the teachers roles and functions in english teaching in primary schoolabstractin ones colorful social life, each person has played a certain role and has a status and has a great capacity in various social groups. teachers have occupied an important position and have taken on the role of “preaching, imparting knowledge, resolving doubts” in school education. teaching activities have been fulfilled by the leading-role of the teachers and the consciousness of the students. primary school period is a key one for students individual psychological development. they learn knowledge and accept education in school and have been changed a great in cognition, emotion, will and personality. therefore, teachers should understand the characteristics of the psychological activity and the rules of the psychological development of the pupils to guide correctly and educate effectively. so teachers should play different roles and functions in the process of english teaching in primary school. such as the role as instructor, leader, parents and friends, psychological doctor, and model. in this paper, the author will make some detailed discussion of these roles. the purpose of this paper is, on the basis of the different roles, to cultivate the students active attitudes towards learning english, and enable them to establish the self-confidence of learning english, develop the students linguistic sense and build a good foundation of phonetics and tone for further learning.key wordsteacher; roles; functions; pupils摘要在纷繁复杂的人生社会大舞台上，每人都扮演着一定的角色，即在各种社会群体中居于一定的地位，具有相当的身份。而教师在学校教育这个人类亚系统中，也占有重要的位置，担负着“传道、授业、解惑”的角色作用。教学活动，主要是在教师的主导作用下，充分发挥学生主体意识过程中开展的。小学阶段是学生个体心理发展的关键时期，他们在学校里学习知识、接受教育，在认识、情感、意志、性格诸多方面引起了巨大的变化。教师在小学英语教学过程中，由于小学生的心理特征，扮演着 不同的角色，如：教师的 “教员”角色; “领导者”角色；“心理医生”角色；“青少年的朋友”角色；“父母”角色；“榜样”角色等等。本文的目的在于根据教师的不同的角色和作用去激发学生学习英语兴趣，培养他们英语学习的积极态度，使他们建立初步的学习英语的自信心，培养学生一定的语感和良好的语音、语调基础，为下一步学习打下基础。关键词教师；小学生；角色；作用introductionin modern society, particularly in the information society which takes the transmission as a basic form, education, as a basic means of cultural transmission, has increasingly become a highly specialized activity, and the professionalization of teachers has become an important way of the career development of the teachers. in the history of educational reform of each country of the world since the 20th century, teachers were considered as the key factors which affect the process of educational reform and determined its success or failure. teachers are the main perpetrators of school education, and the main force of developing education and establishing school and promoting the educational reform. therefore, to study the education, teachers must be studied. teaching is considered as one of the most demanding and challenging social activities in our society, with the ultimate goal of training students to communicate in english. its generally agreed that good teaching is good communication between the teachers and the students and also among students and the best efficiency in a classroom comes from effective cooperation between the teacher and the students. therefore, the teachers roles and functions are vital to the effect of language learning.i. the psychological characteristics of the pupilsprimary school period is a key one for students individual psychological development. in primary period the students learn knowledge and accept education from their teachers and have changed a great in cognition, emotion, will and personality. there exist many psychological characteristics during their physical and mental development.a. perception and memorystudents perceive the overall of things generally and imprecisely at the beginning, gradually, they can perceive each part of things accurately, and they can find the major features of things and the inter-relationship between various parts of things. initially, they often choose the objects of observation for interest, gradually; they are able to follow the perception of things according to the need of learning task. for the perception of spatial characteristics, the low grade primary students need to be supported by concrete things. with the growth of age and knowledge, their spatial perception has a transition from visual to abstract; for the perception of time characteristics, students can grasp the concept of time within the scope of their experience when they enter the school, but they dont understand the unit of time which is not too close to their life, whats more, the judgment of the length of time is also relatively poor for them. with the growth of age, their understanding of the unit of time and their judgment of the length of time are constantly improved, they begin to know the value of time, and the consciousness of study is becoming increasingly strengthened.the students memory is initially unconscious, specific image and machinery memory. they can remember some interesting things very well; however, its difficult for them to remember some learning tasks given by teacher. they can remember some specific, visual materials, but it is hard to remember the abstract concepts with their understanding. as the years went by, their ability for the memorization of abstract words and meaning has improved constantly.b. imagination and thinkingstudents imagination develops gradually from one-sided, faint to integrate, correct imagination. the imagination of low grade primary school students has the characteristics of imitating, simple reappearance. with the growing of age, they will dependent less on the specific imagination, and their imagination will be developed.students thinking has a transition from specific image thinking to abstract logical thinking; however, their abstract logical thinking to a great extent is still associated with emotional experience. low grade primary school students are on the context of can not observe the characteristics of things directly, it is difficult to summarize some concepts, and to high grade, they begin to rely on the performance of a certain number of words to summaries them. whats more, with the growth of age, they grasp the visual, the components of external characteristics of the concept declining gradually, and grasp the abstract, the components of the essential characteristics increasing gradually.c. emotion and willalthough the low grade primary school students can control their emotions initially, there also will be destabilizing phenomena. with the growth of age, to a higher grade, their emotions will be more stable, and the need to get others respect has been intensified, and emotional moral has been developed initially. at this point their likes and dislikes no longer only linger on verbal or facial expression, but they often put them into actions. with the increase of longing for knowledge, they are no longer satisfied with asking “what is it?” and begin to ask “why?”the organ, systems of the body of the primary school students grow fast, who are energetic, lively and active, but at the same time because their havent good discipline and strong willpower, they are easily excited when they come across things, the consciousness and persistence of the activities are very poor, when they complete a task, they often depend on external pressure rather than conscious action. in the learning activities, they start with great momentum but not durable. as the years went by, the consciousness and persistence of will activities will be increased gradually, they can accomplish the work consciously. in the face of difficulties, they can control their sentiments till the issue is resolved. in addition, the imitating of the students is fairly strong, so the impact of families on them can not be underestimated. especially there are more only-child families now, the children are prone to develop some unhealthy habits, like willfulness, and hence more attention should be paid to their education and guidance.d. mood and characterthe primary school students are easily excited, and change more with the changing situation, the performance of kinds “tears and laughs” are often seen. compared with what of the childhood, their self-control has developed, but is still relatively poor; particularly they are easily influenced by others and like to imitate the others behavior unconsciously.their self-evaluation almost depends on the teachers. it is easier to see their own strengths than their shortcomings; they like to evaluate others, they are not good at evaluating themselves objectively. with the growth of age and experience, they no longer evaluate themselves entirely by relying on the evaluation of the teachers, and they are able to make an evaluation independently by comparing their behavior with others. they have learned gradually to apply the moral views and social criteria to evaluate their behavior and others, and can also see their advantages and disadvantages at the same time. in addition, with the development of character, the character characteristics of the students has been strengthened, the impact of their character on their behavior will be increased. although the character of students is very malleable, but with growth of age, their behavior will become a common practice, their character will be more stable, more difficult to change.by then it can be seen that teachers and parents should understand the psychological characteristics and the psychological development rule of primary school students. it is our bounden duty to give them proper guidance and effective education. because of these psychological characteristics of the students, teachers play different roles in english language teaching of primary school.ii. the teachers roles and functions in english teachingprimary schoola. the definition of role and function“role” originally refers a specific figure to actors played in the drama stage on the basis of script. later people use “role” this concept to illustrate the identity play and behavior which the individual has played in social arena, and formed gradually about on the interpretation of the modern role theory of psycho-social and behavior of men. “role” this concept here refers to the individuals certain social status based on social objective expectation, and relying on their subjective ability to adapt to the behavioral pattern as social environment has showed. role is the product of the social status or social expectations unified with the ability of individual, as “relevant to the expectation of behavior with a position”, role has very important functions no matter for the community or the individual, and we can summarize many functions of role in three major aspects: interactive function, social norms function and self-expression functions.1. interactive function of the role: it is the most basic role and also one of the most important functions. on one hand, role shows itself through interactions, and interaction is the interactions between roles. on the other hand, all of play and formation of the role are proceeding in the interactions. as turner said: “mankind create and use the symbols, they communicate with each other with the symbols, they interact with each other by role play; this role play has involved in identifying the others the use of symbols, mind and self which are produced by the interactions enable the human to be unique species. conversely, the producing of this ability of human makes the interactions as the basis of society.2. the social norms function of the role: role exists in society with a certain behavioral norm and behavioral pattern, for each different role, society has given it the specific social norms and behavioral patterns, the individuals play their corresponding roles truly only to reflect the requirement of this behavioral norms and the corresponding behavioral patterns better.3. the self-expression functions of the role: it is not only one of the main functions of the role, but also the reason why people can manifest the characteristics of their own for playing a same role in the common social expectations.although these three functions reflect different functions and profiles, they are interrelated whole. role expresses itself by interactions, and when they interact with others, in order to enable others to understand the true meanings of their speeches and actions, it must abide by the basic norm of role, and express themselves in accordance with the requirements of this norm. this whole of the role functions is the premise of the role operation, and also the assurance of a social role enters the society smoothly.b. instructorinstructor is the first and the most prominent role demonstrated by the teachers. for the inquisitive students, the teacher is the symbol of knowledge, and a living textbook. the teacher takes the course as the theme to guide the students, organize and assess their study. this role requires teachers to have high teaching ability. teachers are required to have certain professional skills, techniques and knowledge in order to help students to acquire knowledge. the main part of his work is to teach students these things. in modern society, the way to acquire knowledge has increased gradually. so the function of teachers as the sole source of information has reduced. therefore, the function of teacher “how to guide students learning” has strengthened. educators come up with the watchword: “teach in order not to teach,” “tell the students how and where to find the answers rather than directly give them knowledge,” the function of guidance of teachers role has been emphasized to strengthen by it.this is the teaching role of teachers; teachers become a knowledge teacher, organizer, assessor and prompter in students learning. through teaching, teachers impart cultural and scientific knowledge to the students and develop their intellectual. in the eyes of the students, the teacher is the treasure house of knowledge and a living textbook, the teachers duty is to impart the knowledge, techniques to the students. teachers in teaching the criteria of the knowledge and skills which they impart to students is three words: profundity, deep, new, profundity means to impart the students with a wealth of knowledge, which will help to widen vision of student; deep means to impart the knowledge with regulating and guiding them to delve in depth; new means to supply new knowledge and new achievements of modern science and technology to add students basic knowledge, and encourage student to learn actively. for this, the teacher itself first of all should become experts and scholars of certain academic subjects, lacking of a teacher of the highest attainments in a particular subjects area, it is unable to play this role of knowledge teacher. similarly, to satisfy the existing knowledge, it is unable to play the role of knowledge teacher for lacking of inquisitive teachers. true excellent teachers should love education, and be filled with enthusiasm for the subjects they teach, and have the ability of delving, and be good at exerting the principles of psychology and pedagogy, and impart the knowledge with the means of suiting the characteristics of students age, and make the students to be infected by the enthusiasm of the teachers to encourage themselves to learn consciously, and understand accurately and grasp firmly the knowledge what the teachers impart.the most important and difficult role that the teacher has to play is to be an organizer. nowadays many approaches and methods advocate task-based activities. so one of the teacher major task is to design and organize tasks that students can perform in the class. it is in doing this that teachers have the most freedom and most challenges, and it is where the teacher can exert creativity in an unlimited way.before organizing an activity in the class, the teacher should envisage what activity is going to be like. he should also anticipate problems that may arise when the activity is being carried out. before students start the activity, the teacher should give instructions clearly and concisely so that students know how to do what. sometimes a teacher demonstration can help. and if necessary, use students native language to clarify.while students are doing the activity, the teacher should walk around the classroom and overhear what the students are saying. if some students are not doing the right task, the teacher should rectify. taking notes in mind will help the teacher to provide accurate feedback later.organization is the prerequisite and guarantee of teaching activities. it is the most important and also hardest role. successful teaching comes from good-organization of teachers, meanwhile, is determined by the students understanding of the purpose, content and ways to the students. first, teachers should design what kind of atmosphere of learning to create, stimulate the learning with interests, and organize students to absorb in learning activities with the fastest speed. for example: organize the activities of suppose, observation, reading, operation, and discussion. second, they play the role of organization and regulation for the time, space, depth, breadth of every aspect of students learning civilities. in addition, teachers must provide proper learning information, check the work and provide the correct feedback timely and enable each student to participate in the teaching activities actively.it is generally believed that it is a major part of a teachers job to assess the students work. as an assessor, the teacher does two things, that is, correcting mistakes and organizing feedback. organizing feedback is an effective way to assess students performance so that they see the extent of their success or failure. when students are not sure how to start an activity, or what to do n