The “Role” of the Second Language Teacher

By Dr. David Shaffer

When we think of the role that a teacher plays in the English-as-a-foreign-language classroom, we often visualize an authority figure standing at the front of the class, spewing out knowledge for the students to retain. This is a quite traditional view of teaching, transmission teaching, where the teacher is viewed as the source of knowledge and transmits it to empty vessels (students’ minds). The more recent view of learning, however, is that more efficient learning comes through experiencing – through the learning trying to discover solutions to what they do not yet know, through inquiry-based learning. This type of learning is especially applicable to the learning of skills, and learning a foreign language is best viewed as learning a skill.

The Teacher is a Facilitator. Viewing language learning as learning a skill, and viewing it as best being attained through student discovery, the role of the teacher becomes multi-faceted. The teacher becomes a facilitator, someone who facilitates the student in their learning process. The facilitator must do all that they can to create the best environment for language learning to take place for the student. As such, the teacher takes on a variety of roles within the language learning classroom, regularly morphing from one role into another and often taking on more than one role at a time, not so different from the work of an acrobat.

The Teacher as Controller. Without control of the class, whether clearly visible or not, effective learning would be hindered. As controller, the teacher creates daily routines and sticks to them: calling role, starting with a warm-up activity, ending with review. This can give the student a sense of familiarity with what to expect next, thus reducing learner anxiety. Having a set of class rules – rules that the students have been informed of, or even helped create – aids in more effortless class control. Raise your hand to answer a question; no chewing gum in class; turn off your cell phone before class, do not jump on the teacher’s desk. Set the rules that best suit your teaching situation.

The Teacher as Organizer. English class time often consists in large part of activities. To work well these activities need to be organized well not just in pre-class preparation but also in in-class execution. The good organizer arouses student interest in the task before the activity even begins. The good organizer gives clear instructions on how to do the activity, demonstrating how it is to be done before starting the activity. The good organizer gives language feedback to the students during and following the activity. [A dialogue on corrective feedback appeared in the last issue of this column.]

The Teacher as Evidence Gatherer. While students are engaged in small-group activities it is the task of the teacher to monitor the students and make notes (i.e., gather evidence) of what the students say and do (and what they neglect to say or do). This can later be given as feedback to the individual student, to the group, or to the whole class, depending on the content or the situation. Evidence gathering occurs before and after the activity – before to ascertain if the students understand the instructions, and after, to ascertain whether the students have retained the target language of a previous lesson.

The Teacher as Prompter. In highly guided and relatively free activities, it is often the case that the student will lack the word, expression, or language structure they want or need to complete their communication successfully. This is where the teacher takes on the role of prompter. This can be done by providing the student with the entire sentence in its correct form, but often more effective is to the student just a bit of information for them to work out their sentence themselves. This could be a key word, the initial sound of the desired word (e.g., sss…), a structural form (e.g., as…as, verb + ing), or even a simple gesture or mime.

The Teacher as Resource. Students always have questions, and especially for the student engaged in inquiry-based learning, it is essential that the teacher act as a resource for the inquiring student – not necessarily giving the student the correct answer or solution, but providing information that will help guide the student to the solution. The teacher must of course be a source of linguistic information for the student (e.g., grammatical information, pronunciation, vocabulary), but in addition, the teacher must be a source of cultural information that helps to make the language make sense, and a resource on language etiquette so that the learner does not inadvertantly make social gaffes (e.g., asking a person’s age).

The Teacher as Comprehensible Input Provider. It is important to provide the student with lots of classroom time for speaking practice, especially in an EFL environment, but it is also very important to provide the student with large amounts of comprehensible input. The teacher can achieve this through the use of “classroom English” whenever possible, limiting the use of L1 to situations where it is absolutely necessary. The teacher should always be mindful of the speed of their speech, be careful to enunciate, and to refrain from dialectical delicacies.

The Teacher as Tutor. It is not uncommon for the advice that a teacher has to give is student-specific. If the advice or information is related to written work, it is often easy to give the information in written form on the student’s work and returning it. However, teacher help may be better given orally in the classroom, as with spoken classroom work. Tutoring sessions can often be given while the rest of the class is busy with an activity. With younger learners, a tutoring desk can be set up at the side of the room for individual tutoring sessions.

The teacher-facilitator has many roles to juggle throughout the course of a lesson – the roles of controller, organizer, evidence gather, prompter, resource, comprehensible input provider, and tutor. A teacher’s roles in relation to a student are not limited to these. Both in and out of the classroom, the teacher is placed in important roles such as role model and councilor, and often as care-giver. It takes a very special creature to take on the role of teacher.

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Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL Monthly Meeting

Date & Time: April 9 (Saturday)

Place: Gwangju National University of Education

• Presentation by Kristy Dolson on classroom activities.
• Presentation by Brian Burgoyne on ELT.

For more details:

Website:  http://koreatesol.org/gwangju

Facebook: Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL

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The Author

David E. Shaffer is President of the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter of Korea TESOL (KOTESOL). On behalf of the Chapter, he invites you to participate in the teacher development workshops at their monthly meetings (2nd Saturday of the month). For many years, Dr. Shaffer has been a professor of English Language at Chosun University, where he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses. He is a long-time member of KOTESOL and a holder of various KOTESOL positions, including First Vice-President and Publications Committee Chair. He credits KOTESOL for much of his professional development in English language teaching.