英语教师在课堂中的角色

Teacher s Role in Middle School English Teaching in Classroom 1 Brief Introduction of the Subject Teaching in class is the main form of teaching in our middle schools It is in the classroom that an English teacher is to cultivate the listening speaking reading and writing abilities of the students give knowledge of phonetics grammar and vocabulary and train the mind of students and get them educated morally intellectually and physically So teachers playing proper roles in the classroom is of vital importance The roles of the teacher will depend to a large extent on the function he performs in different activities A lot of efforts have been devoted to researches on teacher s roles For example from Richards s 1990 understanding the following are among the kinds of roles teachers may see for themselves in the classroom 1 monitor of student learning 2 motivator 3 organizer and controller of pupil behavior 4 provider of accurate language models 5 counselor and friend 6 needs analyst 7 materials developer 8 evaluator Based on the function the teacher performs in different activities Harmer defines the teacher s roles as controller assessor organizer prompter participant and resource provider Harmer 1983 201 The latter are the most common roles that teachers play in present day foreign language teaching and are the ones we talk in this paper 2 Definitions of Role and Teacher s Role The word role derives from the drama In 1934 G H Mead used it firstly to refer to a part a person play in the performance of social life Later Ellis when a student finishes with a very answer the teacher should elicit more by saying and Anything else Yes but why 3 5 Participant Task based teaching methods encourage the teacher to participant in students activities Once the teacher has finished giving instructions and the activity has started there is no point for the teacher to stand in front of the classroom doing nothing Besides monitoring the class the teacher can also join one or two groups as an ordinary participant However the teacher should change his role once he joins the students He should not dominate or appear to be authoritative though students regard it a good chance to practice English with someone who speaks it better than themselves 3 6 Resource provider Although the jug and mud method has been widely criticized the teacher is still considered a good and convenient resource for the students In this sense the teacher s role is the same as the role of instruction materials However when students are supposed to work on their own the teacher should withhold his readiness to provide resources 4 Examples 4 1 The Teacher as Controller 1 The teacher gives students 2 minutes to skim a text and when time is up he asks students to stop and answer some questions 2 The teacher asks students to take turns to make sentences with a newly learned structure If someone makes an error the teacher asks him or her to revise 3 The teacher asks students to produce conversations either orally or in writing by using particular patterns or expressions they have just learned 4 2 The Teacher as Assessor 1 When a student has made a sentence with borrow I borrowed a paper to write a letter the teacher says Well we don t say a paper we say a piece of paper 2 When the students have in groups decided where to go for a spring outing the teacher asks each group to tell the others why they have made such a choice 4 3 The Teacher as Organizers The teacher writes one of five numbers 1 5 on a number of cards the same number as the students Each student draws one card Those who have drawn number 1 will form group 1 and those who have drawn number 2 will form group 2 Thus the students are put into five groups in a random way 4 4 The Teacher as Prompter 1 T Do you have any hobbies S Yes I like singing and dancing T Uhm and S I also collect coins T Oh really how many coins have you already collected 2 The teacher asks a student a question Have you ever bought clothes with problems If the student doesn t seem to be ready to answer the teacher says for example a shirt without and points to the buttons on his own shirt or jacket 4 5 The Teacher as Participant 1 When students are doing a group work task the teacher joins one or two groups for a short period of time 2 The teacher has a word in his mind and asks students to guess by asking only Yes No questions until they make the correct guess 4 6 The Teacher as Resource provider While doing a writing task either individually or in groups the students need to use a particular word they don t know So they ask the teacher 5 Summary Teacher roles are related ultimately to assumptions about language and language learning at the level of approach That is different approaches stipulate different roles for the teacher However there are some common roles that teachers play in most of the major approaches such as controller assessor organizer prompter participant and resource provider Besides every role is not separated A real good teacher is one who can not only play a certain kind of role well but all the roles and can play several roles spontaneously at the same t