英语教学中当代英语教师的新角色

英语教学中当代英语教师的新角色The Modern New Roles Played by the Teacher of EnglishContentsAbstract (1)Key Words (1)I．Introduction (1)II. Changes of Teacher’s Role (3)2.1 Teachers’ Code Switching as Adaptation to the Teacher’s Role (4)2.2 Teacher’s “Macro-Role” (5)2.2.1 The Teacher Should Serve as a Conductor For CommunicationLearning (7)2.2.2 The Teacher Should Develop Classroom Activities to Foster Students’Communication Competence (8)2.2.3 The Teacher Should Attempt to Help Students Open Up toCommunicate in Class (8)2.2.4 The Teacher Should Fulfill the Obligation of an Evaluator inCommunicative Class (8)III．Roles of Teachers of English and Requirements of ELT (9)IV．Conclusion (11)References (12)摘要：新课程标准注重, 传统样式老师被集中应该被转移到学生集中, 如此老师必须是用不同的角色, 像设计师, 组织者, 提示者, 参加者, 资源提供者, 控制器, 科税者等等。

怎么能老师行动这些角色最好,在本文中提供了六点建议。

本文阐述了在教学中英语教师的角色定位问题。

如何把课堂交给学生，引导和激励全体学生的主动参与。

教师的角色不是单一的，当代教师可扮演诸如“组织者”，“启发者”，“引导者”，“帮助者”，“评论者”等新的角色。

教师在课堂设计和安排上应注意发挥学生的主体性，激发学生探究欲望，想方设法培养其独立获取知识的能力。

关键词：当代；教师；教学；角色Abstract: New curriculum standard emphasizes that traditional pattern of teacher-centered teaching should be shifted to be student-centered one, so teachers have to adopt differentroles, like designers, organizers, prompters, participants, resource-providers, controllers,assessors and so on. How can the teacher act these roles best? Six suggestions areprovided in this paper. This paper, therefore, attempts to prove that it is more effectiveteaching for teachers to adopt different roles in various teaching situations. The modernnew roles played by the teacher of English may include the “organizer”, the “initiator”,the “guide”, the “assistant”, the “critic” etc. The teacher should pay attention to exploringstudents’ initiation, inspiring their desire of seeking knowledge, and meanwhile tryinghis/her best cultivating their capabilities of independent study.Key Words: modern；teacher；teaching；rolesI．IntroductionTeaching is considered one of the most demanding and challenging social under kings in our society, with the ultimate goal of training students to acquire the ability to communicate effectively in English. It's generally agreed that good teaching necessitates good communication between teacher and students as well as among students themselves. The best teaching results in a classroom come from effective co-operation between the teacher and the students. Therefore, the teacher's roles in class can be vital to the effect of the students’ language learning. This paper focuses on the analysis of the different roles a teacher plays either in a conventional classroom or an online classroom, and draws the conclusion that these two types of teaching are not enemies but friends. The paper presents a comparative study of the teaching procedures in these two different classrooms, and finds:1) Traditional teaching provides the necessary experience and teaching resources for the development of the online teaching;2) Online teaching can on the other hand supply the up-to-date information and technology for classroom teaching and provide much more freedom for the students.Larsen-Freeman (1986) explains that role plays, whether structured or less structured, are important in the communicative approach because they give learners an opportunity to practice communicating in different social contexts and in different social roles.Role play on the teacher’s part is a highl y flexible teaching activity which has a wide scope for variation and imagination. According to Larose (1987), role play uses different communicative techniques and develops fluency in the language, promotes interaction in the classroom and increases motivation. Here peer learning is encouraged and sharing of responsibility between teacher and the learner in the learning process takes place.Role play can improve learners' speaking skills in any situation, and helps learners to interact. As for the shy learners, role play helps by providing a mask, where learners with difficulty in conversation are liberated. In addition, it is fun and most learners will agree that enjoyment leads to better learning.New curriculum standard requires that teachers should put students first. English like any other language, is a subject that requires very practical language skills in the learner’s part. First students should take part in the activities, and then they can change the language knowledge into language skills, finally they may reach the required language proficiency. When teachers use the “New Senior English for China Student’s Book”, teachers need pay more attention to students’ developments in their language skills. The new book contains alot of information; it does not mean teachers talk all the time. Instead, the aim is to let students practice more. In the process of teaching, teachers should pay attention to developing students’ learning potentials. As a result, the role of the English teacher act differently, based on the function that the teacher performs in different activities; Harmer defines the teacher’s roles as designer, organizer, prompter, participant, resource-provider, controller, assessor (Harmer, 1983:201). Besides, these roles, in my opinion, there are other roles for an English teacher, too.Teacher development is a process of socialization in which a teacher learns how to learn and constantly obtains requirements and regulations related to the role of teachers. The socialization of teachers involves the following stages：a. the exploration stage of the confirmation and adaptation of teachers roles；b. the rapid development and stabilization stage of the maturity of teachers roles；c. the stagnation and withdrawal stage of confusing and losing of teachers roles；d. the consistent development stage of modification and continuous socialization of teachers roles. Teachers in different stages have different behavior characteristics of teachers' roles. Those who are always going beyond the limitation of self- knowledge and teaching experience will keep the state of being dynamic, open and continuous development and becoming scholar-style teachers.Students should realize that the teacher can play many different roles at different times. I would like to demonstrate these different roles so that students should realize when the teacher takes a minor helping role .I would like to let students get used to being responsible for their own learning rather than depending on the teacher all the time. With some class-relevant background information and some necessary help the teacher provides, the students can work out the problems by themselves.Teacher's consciousness of their role is essential in their professional development. Different methods have different assumptions about what roles the teacher plays in the classroom. The term“ role” has been defined in two different ways：1. a role can be defined generally as “a part people play in the performance of social life”;2. “a role is a set of norms and expectations applied to the incumbency of a particular position”.3.The focal type of teacher role is occupational and identifying．It is a position with certain responsibilities and expectations．In the classroom，a teacher in this type of clothes is in contrast with the student and the pupil，both of which are also identifying but not in contrast with the word” learner”;4.The last type of role is manifest to the learner．It is transactional and incidental．Thetransactional part of role is more sophisticated as the teaching and learning process goes along，the teacher may serve as a model in using the type of language，an organizer in conducting activities，a counselor in diagnosing the learners' problems and giving good advise，and participant-observer of the teaching and learning process，etc．II．C hanges of Teacher’s RoleAt the beginning of the 21st century an unprecedented high demand is set on the quality of teaching of foreign languages，especially the teaching of English in Chinese schools and universities．Meanwhile the Ministry of Education is promoting teacher professionalism．How can teachers of English (as a foreign language in China) develop their competency to become true professionals? The traditional knowledge skill mode of professional development is not adequate in the new era and that the development of awareness（of the multifaceted nature of language and the multidisciplinary feature of language teaching）should be added as a component of the goal of teacher education．The first part conceptualizes the operation of TEFL as a component of education in China．The second part analyses the categories of the variables．The third part explores the concept of teacher’s roles and makes the point that teacher's authoritative role should be enhanced rather than diminished in learner-centered and task-based teaching and learning．The fourth part proposes a 3-R approach to promoting in-service professional development of EFL teachers in China，namely，reflecting to be aware of variables and their relations，reading to communicate with specialists of the foundation disciplines，and researching to innovate in the classroom．2.1 Teachers’ Code Switching as Adaptation to the Teacher’s RoleTeachers’ Chinese/English code switching as adaptation to the teacher’s role refers to the instances of Chinese/English code switching as a result of the teacher’s consideration of his/her role in society ---the teacher’s “macro-role”，or the roles in classroom-the teacher’s “micro-roles”.We tentatively discuss teachers’ two kinds of roles: one is the teacher’s social role; the other is the teacher’s role in classroom. Teachers play very important roles in society, who are respectable and set examples for other people. We call this kind of role the teacher’s “macro-role”. Next, teachers also play different parts in their dynamic process of interactions in the classroom context. Harmer (1991) has given one kind of categorization: teachers in classroom can play the roles of a controller (in complete charge of the class);an assessor (for example, to see how well they are performing or how well they performed); an organizer (for example, to organize an activity, to tell or to give instructions); a prompter (for example, to encourage students to participate or to make suggestions); a participant (to participate as an equal in an activity). We can name this kind of role teacher’s “micro-role”. Chinese/English code switching in foreign language classrooms is one of the effective strategies used by teachers to preserve their respective roles.2.2 Teacher’s “Macro-Role”In our society, teaching is regarded as the most sacred and noble profession; teachers are those who have higher quality and never say any dirty words not even to say in the classroom. In this class, she has to mention such English expressions, and by the way talks about hi s personal experience on this phrase. In order to adapt to the “teacher’s macro role”, she avoids Chinese dirty words, but switches to English such as ‘nonsense’ with the aim to weaken the negative effect of those dirty words.When asking this question, the teacher wants to be a participant in this discussion, but the students keep in silence. So, how to break silence and make students become voluntary participants in the activity is a problem to be solved. Consequently, in that context, he has to make his role as an intended participant automatically changes to be a prompter by encouraging students to think and open the mouth. What is the role of prompter? As Harmer (1991) said: “Often the teacher needs to encourage students to participate or needs to make suggestions about how students may proceed in an activity when there is a silence or when they are confused about what to do next. This is one of the teacher’s important roles, the role of prompter.” Why does he choose code switching as a strategy? Firstly, Chinese is our native language and switching to Chinese may shorten the distance between the teacher and students and lessen their anxiety to speak English. Secondly, maybe students do not make clear the meaning of “consciousness”. So his switching codes to Chinese are just to adapt to the change of his teacher’s role.With the guidance of traditional ELT approaches, teacher has been reduced to be the slaves of textbooks; teacher’s talent and creativity have been greatly repressed by the examination-oriented education systems. However, the teaching is an art rather than the mechanic transfer of knowledge; it requires much enthusiasm and originality from the teacher.With the transfer from the teacher-dominant classroom to the learner-centered classroom, teacher’s role has changed and encountered great challenges. The main role ofthe teacher has changed from the transfer of the knowledge to the creative organization of classroom activities, which includes such things as following: selecting and using flexibly textbooks and teaching materials according to the earlier knowledge, personality and actual demands of students, cultivating and making full use of students’ motive, respecting and analyzing their emotions and personalities to facilitate the communication and cooperation between teacher and students, stimulating students with multiple teaching aids to accomplish the learning process with the joint efforts of the teacher and students. Thus the changes in teacher’s role give much weight to the enlighten ment and guidance of students in English classroom.Scrivener classifies the functions of the teacher into three categories: explainer, involver and enabler. The explainer conveys information to the students by explaining or lecturing. The involver tries to involve students actively by designing and organizing appropriate and interesting classroom activities. The enabler creates the conditions that enable the students to learn by themselves, hence the teacher becomes a “guide” or a “counselor” or a “resource of information when needed”. Scrivener holds the view that teaching is essentially about working with other human beings. Therefore teacher should be fully aware of the thoughts and feelings of individual and group students according to which he/she plans and designs specific activities to establish effective working relationships and a good classroom atmosphere. Teaching actually is the process in which teacher and students cooperate to discover and make use of knowledge, thus what to teach should be decided according to the demands of students or even by learners themselves.In the actual teaching process, the teacher plays the roles of the three categories mentioned above respectively. Firstly, when teaching new linguistic knowledge, teacher explains and lectures, instructs students to practice the new knowledge and corrects the errors students make. Secondly, the teacher uses appropriate teaching and organizational procedures and techniques to involve students in the teaching process and facilitate them to express their ideas with what they have learned. The teacher tries to encourage active participation and fluent expression of students, observes their performances while students play the leading role in the classroom and provides information and help when needed. Lastly and what’s the most important, the teacher creates the conditions that enable students to learn for themselves. What benefits students most is not the knowledge they learn at school but the learning habits and research abilities they develop at school.Even while lecturing, the teacher should try to involve students in the teaching process by stimulating them to think actively and find out by themselves the new rules and features of linguistic knowledge, thus students would become more interested andmotivated in their study. Most teachers have already realized what is the most important for a teacher to do in class is to stimulate students’ interest and motive. Besides, teacher can make full use of various modern teaching aids such as computer and Internet to appeal to students’ hearing and sight thus making the lecture more vivid and interesting.To involve students in classroom teaching, the teacher has to design and organize appropriate classroom activities. To achieve this goal, the teacher is supposed to be fully aware of students’ earlier knowledge and linguistic competence so that he/she could design certain activities in which students have to try their best to accomplish the task. This kind of activities are both challenging and encouraging. In addition, the teacher should try to understand students’ interests and demands, and design activities appropriate for their personalities and ages. Last but not the least, the teacher can inspire students to design and organize classroom activities so that their enthusiasm and creativity can be promoted and put to good use.The ultimate goal of classroom teaching is to cultivate and develop students’ learning ability. Teacher should inspire and guide students to discover linguistic rules and practice what they have learned to develop their linguistic competence, by organizing classroom activities, enable students to learn for them thus cultivate a good learning habit for them. To achieve the ultimate goal, teacher has to possess three characteristics according to Scrivener in order to create an effective learning environment: respect (a positive and non-judgmental regard for another person), empathy (being able to see things from other person’s perspective), and authenticity (being oneself with out hiding behind job titles, roles or masks). Apart from being a guide and a facilitator in the study of students, the teacher is expected to be a good listener for students’ worries and problems, a psychologist to relieve students’ anxiety and fear and a personal tutor to help students have a better understanding of them and actualize their potentials.In traditional class, teacher-centered approach is applied. The teacher acts as an authority, he dominates everything-giving lectures, explaining, analyzing, asking questions etc. But for cultivating students’ foreign language communicative competence, a teacher should know intimately the characteristics of his or her students so he or she can teach students in accordance with what they need and what they want. Furthermore, all teachers should be educated to understand how students develop communication competency, and should view the classroom as a place where effective communication can be learned and developed. The following are suggestions that the teacher can follow to enhance the students’ communication development:2.2.1 The Teacher Should Serve as a Conductor For Communication Learning.In communicative language teaching class, the teacher’s main function is to provide students with the maximum amount of practice. Perhaps the most important and difficult role the teacher has to play is that of a conductor, since the success of activities depends on good conduction. The main job of a “conductor” is to tell students what they are going to talk about and give clear instruction about what exactly task is, get the activity going, and organize feedback when it is over. For example, during the presentation stage, the teacher chooses the teaching materials, controls the subject matter of the task, suggests the word and sentence pattern to be used in a drill and asks for the accurate reproduction of the new language items. In the drill, he must designate the students that they are going to work in pair or group, initiates and manages the activity, and even controls the time.2.2.2 The Teacher Should Develop Classroom Activities to Foster Students’Communication Competence.Since the teaching and learning process is essentially a communication process, the classroom activity is the obvious way to improve students’communicative competence. So to encourage students to speak and listen and reinforce them for interacting appropriately in activity is crucial for a language teacher. Use the classroom as a place where students can learn about and practice oral communication skills regardless of the subject matter you are teaching. Help students “screen out” speech and listen for messages and meanings from one another. For example, a student in class who is difficult to understand because of an articulation problem can be taught through the teacher’s behavior that “we are listening for the meaning no matter how long it takes.” If a student stutters, do not finish sentences for that student but wait for the communication to be completed. The teacher should encourage through comments, such as “Let’s listen to what Tom has to say,” and through nonverbal attentive cues that help the student speak and the class listen. The teacher should also realize that speech and communication skills precede developmentally helps to encourage students to interact.2.2.3 The Teacher Should Attempt to Help Students Open Up to Communicatein Class.In communicative class, the learning-disabled student who cannot process auditory information may need many visual cues to learn, and will certainly need shout, clear instructions. The student who is communication apprehensive should not be forced to speak in front the class, but may be more comfortable speaking to a small group while sitting down. The teacher should observe carefully how each student uses language for communication and find ways of helping each to progress. And they should not make judgment concerning intelligence, creativity, or communication competence on the basisof dialect. Also, the teacher should never permit laughter or derision because of the way a student speaks, that is to say, teachers must never downgrade students because of reticence, speech defects, dialectal differences or the way they communicate. Furthermore, it is the role of the teacher to help students develop effective communication skills in class.2.2.4 The Teacher Should Fulfill the Obligation of an Evaluator in CommunicativeClass.One of the essential obligations that a teacher should fulfill in the communicative class is evaluation. For example, student’s know ledge of grammar needs measuring, since in the end it will determine their ability to understand and produce the language. Or, speaking should be evaluated in the situation such as presentation and debate to test a student’s understanding of how to use Eng lish structure, vocabulary and expression. Undoubtedly, teacher’s evaluation involves not only what to evaluate, but also how to evaluate. Here we take correction for example. Correction in immediate creativity should be very gentle. The teacher should say thing like, ‘Well, that’s not right, is it? We say, I go to school, but not I’m going to school!’ Thus it is enough that a mistake has been acknowledged. Correction in this way will not seriously damage the relaxed class atmosphere and even can encourage students to communicate freely and bravely. In one word, good evaluation can tell student how well they performed linguistically and how successful their performance is, and also, can give ideas to students as to how their problems might be solved.III．Roles of Teachers of English and Requirements of ELTOne of the requirements of the English Language proficiency courses offered to distance learners of National University of Malaysia is to make the course as close as possible to the courses offered to stu dents’ on-campus in terms of course content and evaluations. English for Social Sciences is based on a study guide whom wraps around the text Global Views by M.E. Stoolie make the course comprehensible for distance learners. The course is aimed at equipping them with integrated skills in English to enable them to cope with language requirements in the academic and work environment.Role play was chosen as one of the tasks in this course to create a situation for the learners to actively interact in the language, thereby making the language learning more meaningful. At the same time, the learners are introduced to the different learning styles -- listening, remembering, discussing, writing and presenting.For the purpose of this study, the distance learners from the Kecking, Sarawak Centrewere used as the sample. The class comprised 15 working adults. Except for two learners, the rest were all primary school teachers. In terms of spoken skills, the teachers rated themselves as poor. They do not teach English Language at school and neither do they use it at work place or at home. Thus they have difficulty conversing in English.Distance learners from different districts meet their respective instructors twice a semester in their tutorial centre. Each meeting is made up of six contact hours. These learners are quite different from the mainstream students. They do not meet as often as the latter which in a way inhibits interaction (perhaps due to shyness and unfamiliarity).Individual work such as task-based activities may hamper or minimize communication among the learners. Full time students in normal classes who have plenty of contact hours for teacher-student consultation may not face such problems.Role play in this distance learning class allows the objectives of the course to be met in the limited time, through an integrated approach which allows the practice of language skills, content and interaction skills and strategies.As this was a tertiary level class, the writer used newspaper reports on the Japanese Encephalitis outbreak collected over a period of time. This issue was specifically chosen as it made headlines in all Malaysian newspapers and the electronic media during that period. It included the views of the farmers, medical experts, consumers' rights and the feelings expressed by the affected residents.The writer had chosen this issue to provide an opportunity to the learners to practice a real-life situation. It was also appropriate for role play because it involved many personalities thus allowing the learners to assume those roles. The topic chosen was good as it highlighted social issues.The teacher's role in giving clear instructions was equally important. The learners were asked to get into groups of five and choose a leader for each group. All the reports were given to the leaders who assigned individual roles to each group member. They were asked to improvise the message in the reports which were not too structured and to find a structure that fits into a real life situation.Apart from that, the learners were asked to jot down in a diary, journal or log book, their feelings, comments, thoughts and perceptions about a particular learning experience related to the role play. Such entries could provide opportunities to the learners for self-reflection and self-observation.At the end of the activity the teacher conducted a session to get feedback from the learners on their participation. This is important for any activity based learning as it helps to reinforce the aim and purpose of the activity. Besides that, learners develop awarenessand confidence in their own ability and learning strategies. (Refer to Appendix A for additional information on the role play.)The new century presents a higher demand for ELT. In addition to the five basic skills, students are expected to possess comprehensive ability to use English freely and efficiently. Therefore, the teacher is supposed to create appropriate and real situations for students to communicate in English. Further more, linguistic competency is far from being adequate, students have to be equipped with the abilities to communicate and cooperate with others, to organize activities and adapt to new circumstances. Hence, teacher can design and organize classroom activities to foster such abili ties of students. What’s more important, through reading and discussion in class, teacher should help students develop a healthy psychology so that they can face up to the difficulties in their study and handle problems properly in their future. Thus, besides a good grasp of English, a teacher is required to possess the ability to organize classroom activities, to motivate and stimulate students, and to cultivate students’ comprehensive abilities and healthy psychology.When the network is universally used, information and knowledge are no longer as important as the ability to obtain and use them. The teacher can dominate the class no more; instead, the teacher should cooperate with and guide students in the process of ELT. Various methods such as discussion, self-study and teaching among themselves should be adopted to stimulate students to acquire knowledge and carry on research on their own. Further more, the teacher should make full use of the new and modern teaching aids, especially the resources of network to update and enrich teaching materials and approaches so as to cultivate students’ learning abilities and provide more opportunities for them to put to use what they have learned.Living in the network age, students have their minds broadened and learn to be more independent than ever. The teacher should try to communicate and make friends with students so as to design appropriate classroom activities appealing to them. By making use of their independent characteristics, the teacher can foster students’ originality and ability to study by themselves. Being fully aware of their personality and individual differences, the teacher should try to satisfy students’ demands and expectations. With the help of various modern teaching aids, the teacher can create a dynamic classroom atmosphere.IV．ConclusionThe teacher, students, and learning materials are the three main factors in the whole process of English Language Teaching. The roles of the teacher are of the primary。