continued from No 17
Teacher's Essay Contest
***
In the fast-moving world we live in, everything around us is changing
fast. On the surface of it, the profession of a teacher may seem to be one of those
absolutely stable and definite things that will remain forever. Teachers have been
teaching students for ages and to some people their roles at the lesson look clear:
explain the new material, train it a little, give homework and then ask it at the next
lesson and put marks into students’ exercise-books or diaries. But this approach to
teaching is too primitive, childish and old-fashioned, though to some extent it has
similarities with the ‘PPP’ (presentation, practice and production) approach.
Nowadays the role of a teacher at the lesson is more complicated. A truly efficient and
creative representative of this ancient profession is likely to use a beneficial variety
of activities in the classroom, to be able to adapt a course-book to meet the needs of
some particular learners, and even to design materials and activities tailored to specific
classes. In order to do this successfully and to achieve the highest goals the teacher
needs to behave in different ways at different stages of the lesson. These different kinds
of behaviour are called ‘teacher’s roles’. These roles will be appropriate to the
type of a lesson, lesson aims and the level and age of learners. Let us have a closer look
at some of them.
To start with, every teacher begins with the role of a planner. If you want your lesson to
be effective, you must think everything over thoroughly. Every time I start working with a
different class I always find out that my old lesson plans are absolutely useless and I
have to start from the very beginning. During the lesson the teacher plays a lot of roles,
for example ‘a presenter’. It is impossible to think of a lesson without this role
because every time we introduce new vocabulary or grammar to the learners we use this
role, and there definitely must be something new at any lesson.
Then when teachers explain how to do this or that activity and how to follow different
strategies they are “instructors” (even if the teacher uses the tasks in the books
which are certainly clearly set, for some students it is not enough just to read them
without any additional help). Moreover, teachers play the role of a “facilitator”
after getting some feedback and then helping students work out the rules together without
spoon-feeding them. In mixed-ability classes, and in most cases I work with such learners,
I also take the role of a facilitator providing those who are not in the vanguard with
ideas and extra help because otherwise such pupils might fall behind their classmates.
However, every time I keep telling them that I am not a ‘walking dictionary’ as I am
not sure if they really need help or are just being sly enough to take advantage of my
kindness, that is why I am always in doubt about their assessment .
The role which is very close to this one is the role of an “organizer”. Today the idea
of ‘cooperative learning’ is very popular, that is why when teachers organize
pair-work or group-work they must take into account a lot of things, being true managers
of the classroom. Everything is important – how to group the right students, how to
arrange their desks, for instance, arranging them into a horseshoe, let alone the problem
of discipline. What level of noise to consider beyond the limit, because silence at a
language lesson, which is supposed to teach students how to communicate with other people
(with the exception of reading and writing lessons), is nonsense, etc. As soon as the
activity starts, the teacher takes another role – that of a “monitor” who goes
around the class checking learning, making a note of any important error to discuss it
later, helping learners do the exercise better. (Actually, that means that teachers take
on more than one role at the same time).
The next role I am used to is that of a “consultant”, especially when students are
busy with project work or in general doing some creative tasks. In this case they need
advice on a lot of things and if they trust their teacher they address him or her first.
Then I would like to comment on the role that some people not acquainted with the
teacher’s job may consider to be the easiest – that of a “controller” and an
“assessor”. They may think that the main aim of assessing is to punish lazy students
and ‘to take revenge’ on those who fail to work hard. On the contrary, when I check
students’ letters, reports, essays and stories and put my comments on the margins, in
fact, I am trying to help them again to improve their work, to get rid of some drawbacks.
Sometimes I feel as if I am a ‘language doctor’ because I have to find the real cause
of their difficulties. The same thing is true with oral answers and presentations: the
main idea is to teach them how to speak logically, fluently and accurately at the same
time. The teacher should not stop the student and correct all the mistakes immediately as
it could intimidate the speaker and spoil the whole speech in the long run. Frankly
speaking, it is rather difficult because teachers are mostly perfectionists and I am no
exception.
The last role, but of course not the least important, probably even the most important of
all is that of a “motivator”. It starts at the very beginning of the lesson when
teachers during the warming-up stage try to elicit from the students some information
connected to the topic of the lesson thus making them use their previous knowledge and in
this way arousing their curiosity. To keep learners interested in the language is not at
all easy because, on the one hand, they might understand the importance of it for their
future life but, on the other hand, there are so many temptations around them in our
consumer society and learning in general is not always fun but mostly hard work. It is
even more difficult with young learners, as they do not bother about the practical use of
English some day in the distant future: this idea is too vague for them. In primary
school, teachers use a lot of games, poems, songs and drama. It does not mean that
students from secondary school do not like these activities – they enjoy them, too! They
are also fond of team competitions, role-plays, doing crossword puzzles, watching video,
creating different projects (both paper and computer ones), writing poetry like haiku and
cinquain.
Teenagers are also keen on discussions, and they appreciate the teacher’s opinion on
their favourite topics – music and fashion. Some of them become motivated when they take
part in different language contests and competitions, so for the teacher to be a
well-informed person about such events is a must. Finally, in modern society we have a lot
of children who feel unhappy because of their family problems: either they live in a
single-parent family or their parents are very busy earning money and have no time for
them. So, unfortunately, teachers sometimes have to take the role of the “parents” and
even “friends” because our students often need comfort, help and advice in everyday
life though they may seem very independent and sure of themselves.
In conclusion, I would like to say that it is very hard to enumerate all the roles
teachers use and it is even harder to separate them at different stages of the lesson:
they are so interwoven that I can hardly imagine how I can cope with them all practically
at the same time. But I am devoted to my profession. Although, like many other teachers, I
may grumble from time to time, I cannot live without it.
By Tatiana Nedelina
***
The role of the teacher is immense in every kind of education. The
problem of the teacher’s personality has always existed. Both the teacher’s
personality and his/her authority have direct influence on the results of teaching. A
teacher influences not only on the teaching, but also on the learners. This process can be
managed and may be spontaneous.
During a lesson the teacher has to manage the activities and the learners in the classroom
in different ways. It involves his/her behaviour in different ways at different stages of
the lesson. These different kinds of behaviour depend on the aims in the teacher’s mind
and on the part of the lesson.
The teacher changes his/her own roles during a lesson. The roles may be different
according to the type of lesson, its aims, the level of students and their age. What are
the roles?
Before the lesson, teachers are organizers. We plan our material to make sure that the
lesson is suitable for the learning purpose. We prepare what we are going to teach. At
this stage we must foresee our learners’ problems and be ready to find a way out of
possibly difficult situations. But this role of the teacher as organizer does not end
here. Organizing various activities takes place during the lesson, too.
It is during the lesson that the bigger part of teacher’s roles are activated. When we
are presenting new language or new vocabulary to the students, we are presenters. So, we
can say, “I want to make sure you have understood the meaning of these words and their
use. Can I help you with any words or phrases?” Then, commenting on the meaning of
words, the teacher acts as consultant (The difference between these words is the
following: Do these words have positive or negative meaning? Don’t mix up these two
words. Which of the following words are possible in the sentence? Etc). Generally
speaking, the teacher is a consultant when he/she gives the learners detailed information
about the language or about an activity.
But we are also organizers when we are setting up activities: reading aloud, silent
reading, group work, role-play, written work and so on. This role of the teacher is
connected with the role of an instructor and also involves organizing the learning space
and making sure everything in the classroom is running smoothly. At the same time, when
students, for example, are doing a role-play, one role we have is to make sure that they
are doing what we want them to do. This is monitoring. The teacher goes around the class
during some activities (individual, pair or group work), helps children and checks
learning.
The teacher is a motivator when he/she encourages students to take part in the activities.
For example, to encourage pupils to read aloud, we can say: “Read the passage in groups
of three. One person reads as a narrator, the others as characters”. To encourage pupils
to ask questions and answer them, we may say “Try and make your answers as lively and
interesting as possible. What is the answer to this?” To involve students into a
conversation, the following phrases may be used: “Can you suggest another solution? I
think Ivan knows more about it than we do. Forget about being nervous. It is far better to
make a few mistakes than to say nothing.”
During the lesson the teacher plays the role of a facilitator if he/she is able to
recognize the cause of learners’ difficulties and help them by giving advice or by
comforting them.
An individual approach is to be used with each student, especially in assessment. Making a
decision about the marks for the lesson, the teacher acts as an assessor. The mark itself
is a rather complicated thing: it is very subjective, to a great extent it depends upon
the experience of the teacher, and for those students not satisfied, it takes a lot of
time to explain the reasons for it. Low-motivated children usually do not care about their
marks, but it is the only mechanism at hand for influencing them. So we are to present our
demands beforehand, and they should be simple enough for students to understand, accept,
and carry out.
When we present our demands to the students this should be done within a limited period of
time – it depends upon the ability of the group to perform the task – such
simplification of the checking procedure can lead to raising the motivation power of the
mark and, sequentially, to positive motivation on the whole.
After the lesson, we usually reflect about how successful the lesson was, what the
learners understood and were able to do. We analyze our work to plan the next lesson
appropriately. At this step we act as self-assessors and planners.
To conclude, teacher’s roles are considered very common. In my opinion, the most
important of them are planning and organizing. As a rule, teachers take on more than one
role at the same time. And this is natural and logical.
By Andrey Senyushkin
|