Role of Esl Teacher free essay sample

The Role of an English Teacher in the Middle School Classroom Thesis statement: The teacher plays several kinds of roles in order to improve the students’ English level. 1 Introduction. 2 The teacher plays many roles in the middle school classroom. A. The teacher is a controller. B. The teacher is an organizer. C. The teacher is an assessor. D. The teacher is a participant. E. The teacher is a helper. F. The teacher is a prompter. 3 Conclusion. Abstract: For the IT and all kinds of mediums are developing quickly, An English teacher is not the only way for the students to get their knowledge. The difference between a teacher and a student is not that a teacher is more knowledgeable than a student, but that a teacher can develop a student’s intelligence, mood, character, vitality and personality. â€Å" Education is not merely culture teaching, but stimulate the creation of people and wake up people’s emotion so that people can act freely and voluntarily†, Pan(2002)said. We will write a custom essay sample on Role of Esl Teacher or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page â€Å"Teachers are related to people’s growth closely. People’s development changes with time. These changes make more demands to teachers. † Yu(2005) said. The English teacher not only teaches the students to study English, but also how to improve themselves in various aspects. So, the role of the only â€Å"controller† of an English teacher could not meet the need of the development of education, and she/he must be the controller, organizer, participant, helper and prompter. Key words: The roles of an English teacher, controller, organizer, participant, helper, prompter, assessor. I Introduction The 21st century is full of high-technology and high competition, and the requirements of English talents are different from the past. Nowadays, learning English is more important. The English teacher not only teaches students the knowledge, but also teaches students how to study and how to use their knowledge. As a second language which the students must study, English is not so easy and interesting for every student. Many students feel that studying English is very dull and very difficult. And day by day, they lose their heart in learning English. But now, English is very very important for the young people. If they want to go to universities, they must pass the English exam. If they want to go abroad, they also must pass all kinds of English exams. And if the teacher only teaches the students and answers their questions, the students could not study English better. So, the English teacher should change their roles in the middle school classroom so that the students could study English easily and well. 2 The Roles of the English Teacher 1. Controller As a controller, the English teacher controls the class fully. The teacher tells the students what they must do, when they do it; what they must study, when they should study. He/she also controls the students as to when they should speak English and what kinds of English they should speak. In many middle school classrooms, especially in the country middle school classrooms, the English teacher first tells the students what they will learn in that class, then teaches the content in the English book and asks the student to read, or do exercise and so on. We also hear the teacher say: â€Å"now, do the exercise by yourselves, and if you have questions, you may ask me. † In this way, the students may pay their attentions to what the teacher say, and all the students study the same knowledge in the same way and at the same time. It is also very effective in learning new lessons and new sentences. But the teacher should make sure that all students pay their attentions to what he’s said. However, the role of an English teacher as the â€Å"controller† controls all the class, and the students have less time to speak English and it is not good for developing the students’ abilities of using the language. So, the teachers should give their students much time to speak English. 2 Organizer It is very difficult for an English teacher to play the role â€Å"organizer†. If the teacher organizes the class-game well, the class-game is successful. Before the teacher asks the students to do the exercise, the teacher must know that if the students do not know what they should do, they will waste all the time of that class. And the students who know less English do not know how to take part in these games. They may do those games in Chinese. It is not effective too. So, before the class-games, the teacher must see that every student knows what he or she should do. So, at this time, the teacher should give an example, and then, ask some of the students to do that. If it is a dialogue exercise, the teacher could give some students the roles of this dialogue, and then ask the student to do the dialogue in the classroom. For example, when learning THOMAS EDISON in Unit 11 of Book 3 of â€Å"Junior English Book†, the teacher may ask the students to play Edison, Edison’ s mother, Edison’ s father and so on. And other students are reporters, they may interview the mother and the father, learning Edison’s hobby; they may interview the teacher, learning the study of Edison; they could also interview the doctor, learning the progress of saving Edison’ mother and so on. For example, (Sa is interviewing Edison’ father. ) Sa: Excuse me, please, I’m on China Daily, are you Edison’s father? F: Yes, nice to meet you. Sa: Pleased to meet you too. We all know your son, Thomas Edison, is a great inventor now. Can you tell me what he was always doing when he was a child? F: Yes, when he was a child, my son was always trying out new ideas. Sa: can you give me an example? F: Ok. One day when he was five. I saw him sitting on some eggs. I asked him why he was doing that. But he didn’t answer. Instead, he asked me a question. Sa: what did he say? F: â€Å"Hens are able to have chicks. Why can’t I? † he said. Sa: Could you answer his questions at that time? F: I’m afraid I couldn’t. Sa: Oh, thank you very much. F: You’re welcome. Goodbye! Sa: Bye! (Sb is interviewing the doctor) Sb: I know you are a very good doctor. You saved Edison’ mother, can you tell us what happened that day? D: That day, Edison’ mother was ill. I was asked to go quickly. I went as soon as possible. When I saw her, I said that she needed an operation at once. But I wasn’t able to operate. Sb: why? D: Because it was night, and the light in the room was very bad. I couldn’t see clearly enough! Sb: what should you do then? D: Edison thought hard and had an idea. His father owned a large mirror. Edison took all the lights in the house and put them on a long table. Then he put the big mirror behind them, so there was enough light. Sb: Could you see clearly? D: Yes. I operate on his mother at once and she was saved. Sb: Great! By the way, what do you think of little Edison? D: Very clever! In this way, all of the students take part in the class-game and remember the sentence style. So the teacher pays attention to the role of organizer, making sure that every student understands. If it is necessary, the teacher can do that in Chinese. And it is also necessary for the teacher to spend much more time on thinking of how to organize the students when they do the preparation. 3. Assessor The main work a teacher should do is assessing the learners’ study and knowing whether they study well. If no, the teacher should change the way he taught. There are two ways for assessing: correcting and feedback. When a teacher is correcting the students’ mistakes, he should pay his attention to the way he speaks, and do not cut short the students. Otherwise the students may lose their hearts and dare not speak English. Feedback is assessing the students’ work when they finish it. The teacher should approve the students’ advantages while he points out the problems and tells them how to deal with those problems. Ever since they are enrolled into schools, students are trained in learning methods and habits. In this way, they will switch from the passive position to the initiative position, so as to lay a solid foundation for further studies. Learning to use dictionaries is one of the most basic skills in English study. Teachers should guide students to learn to look up new words in the dictionary. Different dictionaries are designed with different purposes. Students are guided to choose suitable ones. Out of dictionaries,students can learn pure English, because lots of language items are from original books, newspapers or magazines. Students need guidance on how to preview new lessons. The purpose to preview is to get to know new words, language items and the content preliminarily with the help of dictionaries and reference books. Students may feel it too difficult or unused to it at the very beginning, but day after day, if they insist on using the method, they will enjoy the happiness of previewing new lessons. This is one way to probe. Based on their own preliminary preview, they are able to study with problems and to raise deep level questions in class. So teachers can organize lessons at a higher level. At the stage of introducing new lessons, teachers should try every means to arouse students’ interest, motivate their desire to take part in the study process. During this procedure, teachers design situations for teaching of either a language item or a sentence pattern, and presenting tasks, to make students realize their lack of knowledge. Students’ motivation to learn will be generated in this way. So they will be eager to get involved into the learning process. Teachers’ guiding role is necessary for new English learners. At the stage of guiding, teachers work as guiders, guiding students to form good learning habits and as promoters, promoting students to love learning English 4 Participant Participant† is that the teacher thinks of himself as one of the students and takes part in their games, not that he/she looks at the students at the platform. It could enliven the atmosphere of the class and offer the students chances to speak to someone who knows more English. By taking part in the games by the teacher. â€Å"there is no love and there is no education†. The love of the teachers is that the teacher unders tands the students’ spiritual world, learning to think as a student and studying together with the students. At the same time, the teacher may get something which can help him when he explains the problems to the students. For example, when teaching THE NECKLACE in Unit 18 of Book 1 of Senior English Book, the teacher may ask the students to give a further end of the story. T: When Mathilde heard what Jeanne had said, she simply couldn’t believe her own ears. The lost necklace wasn’t a real diamond necklace. How she regretted that she hadn’t told Jeanne what had happened then! She was too sad to say a word. But she thought for a while and felt it wasn’t a bad thing, because it made her a hard-working woman. S1: Mathilde was very sad when she heard that. â€Å"dear me! then she fell to the ground. When she stood up, she kept on laughing and saying â€Å"Necklace†. She was mad at last. S2: Jeanne was so moved that she took Mathilde home and gave her a lot of money. With the money, Mathilde and her husband started a new life and lived happily. Through this discussion, the students give free rein to their imagination and exercise their speaking; the teacher learns more a bout the story’s end. But as a participant, the teacher should be careful to control the class, he should give the students much more time to speak and discuss. 5. Helper To the students, a teacher is a dictionary, a tool book and a computer. Whenever they meet problems, they will ask the teacher to help them. When students do oral communication games, reading and writing, they will meet with many many problems; they will ask the teacher to help them understand them. Besides, one’s confidence and attitude determine if his English is poor or well. So, when the students lose their heart in learning English, the teacher should say something to comfort them; when they make advances, the teacher should praise them; when they have problems, the teacher should help them in time. Loving the students, the teacher should be good at getting into the students’ emotion world. To get into the students’ emotion world, the teacher first should be the students’ friend and feel their happiness, anger, grief and joy. † The teacher should create favorable conditions that help in time, and recommend some favorable English readings and magazines to the students and tell them some reading skills in the class to improve their reading speed. 6. Prompter â€Å"Prompter† is a teacher role which makes the student the center. He lets them study by themselves. Teachers are to lead and encourage students. Yang(2005). Nowadays, in China, professionals analyze teachers’ roles mainly in two aspects: from microscopic point of view, teachers’ roles in learners’ development: from microscopic point of view, teachers’ expectations of learners. The former beliefs tend to be abstract, but the latter expectations always show out their concrete qualities, and their impact on learners’ development. Teacher’s expectations of learners and their impact result from the process of interaction between teacher and learner. During the process, teachers constantly insist on influencing the learner according to their own expectations, and the learner will step by step develop himself as the teacher expects. Teacher’s roles will affect everything the students do in the classroom, whether these are implicit or explicit. And teacher’s deep—rooted beliefs about how languages are learnt will pervade their classroom actions more than a parceled methodology they are told to adopt or course book they follow. A British educational theorist Pajares thinks that the teacher’s beliefs have a greater influence than the teachers’ knowledge on the way. They plan their lessons by depending on all kinds of decisions. They make their general classroom practices. Social constructionists also find that the teacher’s beliefs are far more influential than knowledge in determining how individuals organize and define tasks and problems, and are better predictor of how teachers behave in the classroom. Social constructivists find that an effective teacher creates a learning atmosphere which is cognitively and affectively expanding; a learning atmosphere which enables the learner to become a more adequate and knowledgeable person. It is clear that this kind of approach places great emphasis upon what the teacher as a person brings to the teaching—learning relationship and how the learner can be helped to develop as a whole person by the provision of a supportive learning environment, which allows individuals to develop in their own way. Aspirn and Boy express it. â€Å"pupils feel the personal emotional structure of the teacher long before they feel the impact of the intellectual content offered by that teacher. † This obviously has particular implications with regard to teachers’ views of themselves since a teacher who lacks self—esteem will find it impossible to build the self—esteem of others. This is equally true when it comes to conveying dignity and respect. Thus, the language teacher needs to convey a sense of self—confidence when using the language, at the same time especting learner’s attempts to express themselves and their views in the language. III. conclusion Now teacher work with students who are actively planning and managing their own futures. Teachers prepare students for a range of career path ways and help them develop the skills habits and attitude they will retain over a lifetime of learning. It is a more challenging role for teachers now that the expect ations are more complex.