Teacher Roles in Communicative Language Teaching in Middle School1

中学英语教师在交际教学法中的角色Teacher Roles in Communicative anguage Teaching in Middle SchoolContentsAbstract.1Key words.11. Introduction.22. Literature Review.32.1 Historical and theoretical background to CLT.32.2 CLT in China.52.3 Traditional English teaching style.52.4 Traditional English teacher.73. Roles of English Teacher in CLT.73.1 Classification of teacher roles in CLT.73.2 The Teaching strategies of the teacher in CLT.93.3. Teachers function.114. Capabilities of Qualified Teachers.114.1. Morality and personality.124.2. Willingness to embrace new concepts.124.3. Occupational capabilities.124.4. Research capabilities.135. Conclusion .13References.13 Teacher Roles in Communicative Language Teaching in Middle SchoolTeacher Roles in Communicative Language Teaching in Middle SchoolAbstract: In order for students to achieve fluency, teachers must consider implementing a complete Communicative Language Teaching curriculum for teaching English. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has become a fashionable methodology of teaching foreign languages in middle schools in China in recent years. It is wildly used in middle school. It pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language, combining these into a more fully communicative view. The teacher will play different roles while teaching, only when the teacher well-do his or her job, can the class be effective to students learning. This thesis investigates the multiple roles of teacher, analyzes the capabilities of a qualified teacher, and introduces the development of CLT and the application in middle school in China.Key words: CLT; teacher roles; capabilities of a qualified teacher 摘 要：近年来，随着人们对语言认识的改变，外语教学越来越强调交际能力的培养。作为当今外语教学的主流方法，交际教学法跳出了传授知识、培训技能的误区，注重培养学习者的语言交际能力。交际语言教学法是一种强调学习语言目的是培养交际能力的外语教学方法，产生于20世纪70年代初期，在短短的十年之内，就被大多数英语教师所接受，并且在英语教学中起支配作用。交际教学法一方面需要教师有很宽广的知识面，甚至是超出本专业的知识；另一方面，它要求教师有较强的语言运用能力。同时，教师在运用交际教学法进行教学的时候将会扮演一些不同的角色,一位好的英语教师不仅应该拥有较高的专业水平，还应善于运用交际技巧激发学生学习的积极性。本文阐述了介绍了交际教学法的产生和发展，交际教学法的实质，研究了教师的多重角色，探讨了好教师的必备素质，并且介绍了交际教学法在我国的中学英语教学中应用时出现的一些问题。关键词：交际教学法；教师的角色；好教师的素质1. IntroductionAs we speed toward and into the 21st century, we can indeed take some pride in a sophisticated accumulation of knowledge about second language learning and teaching. Such was not always the case. Language teachers in the middle part of the 20th century witnessed the “birth” of a disciplined approach to second language learning and teaching, but the nascent profession was hard put up to come up with viable answers to questions about how to teach interactive skills in the classroom. By 1970s, second language acquisition was establishing itself as a discipline in its own right, asserting its place as not merely an offshoot of linguistics of psychology. Teaching is considered the most demanding and challenging social activities in our society, with the ultimate goal of training students to acquire the ability to communicate in English. Its generally agreed that good teaching is good communication between teacher and students and also among students and the best efficiency in a classroom comes from effective co-operation between the teacher and the students. Therefore, teacher roles can be vital to the effect of the language learning. Traditionally, the evaluation of a teacher has depended on the amount of knowledge he or she put into the students heads: the more, the better. As a result, the image of a successful teacher has been the one who can input a large amount of knowledge and information while standing on the platform of the classroom. As Scrimshaw points out, if using a theater analogy, the traditional instructor serves as the lead actor-the one who must carry the show, even though there is allowance for other characters to interact. In a class of such a kind, the teacher is the unquestionable authority who dominates the class from the beginning to the end, while the students are just the passive accepters. A considerable amount of time is spent on the explanation and analysis of grammar, sentences, phrases, words and their usages with comparatively little time on exercises and practice. When the communicative approach is introduced into the classroom, emphasis is laid on the four related language skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking. In this learner-centered class the teacher has to shift his or her role from a dominant teacher to an organizer or a director, because the goal of language teaching is to enable students to use the target language to communicate efficiently in real life. Thus, the teacher can only take a dominant role only when his or her expert knowledge is needed for the explanation of the difficult sentences. Teachers and students all participate in the teaching and learning process, which breaks down the traditional teaching patterns.The New Curriculum Criterion for senior high school exhibits bran-new English teaching methodology, it definitely clarifies that the major task of the basic education is to stimulate and cultivate the students interest in English learning, make the students be self-confidence in it, form good habits of studying and adopt efficient strategies of studying English. It is well known that in our English teaching, first of all, the teacher tries his/her best to cultivate students, make them be enthusiastic in learning English. Under the idea of CLT, we should adopt all kinds of useful means of teaching fully utilize them in classroom, where the students improve their language skills.Communicative Language Teaching is a kind of foreign language teaching which emphasizes that the goal of language learning is communicative competence. It is a wildly used good methodology in high school. It pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language, combining these into a more fully communicative view. According to Littlewood, CLT may have the following particular features:1It aims to teach the language needed to express and understand different kinds of functions, such as requesting, describing, complaining, exchanging, etc. 2It emphasized the process of communication through which learners learn the language and develop their competence by appropriate use of the language, performing classroom tasks and interacting with other people.3It is learner-centered. Learners are not passive recipients. Instead, they actively participate in classroom learning process, performing tasks and taking the responsibility of their own learning.According to CLT, the teacher has two main roles: the first role is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and the texts. The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group. The latter role is closely related to the objectives of the first role and arises from it. These roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher; first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself, second as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities. A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational capacities. Other roles of assumed for teachers are needs analyst, counselor, and group process manager. 2. Literature Review2.1 Historical and Theoretical Background to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)The Communicative Language Teaching originated from the changes in British language teaching tradition dating back from the late 1960s. The framework of the Communicative Approach has expanded in mid-1970s. Until the early 1980s, the Communicative Approach sprung up in the field of second language pedagogies of China. From then on, the Communicative Approach brought great reforms to second language teaching and learning. It aroused peoples awareness of the development of communicative competence.Within the last quarter of the 20th century, CLT had been put forth around the world as the new or innovative way to teach English as a second or foreign language. Teaching materials, course descriptions, and curriculum guidelines proclaim a goal of developing the students communicative competence. Current journals and books on foreign language teaching have revealed quantities of research findings on CLT. The origins of CLT can be traced to concurrent developments in both Europe and North America. In Europe, the language needs of a rapidly increasing group of immigrants and guest workers, as well as a rich British linguistic tradition including social and linguistic context in description of language behavior. It led the Council of Europe to develop a syllabus for learners based on notional-functional concepts of language use. Language functions were based on an assessment of the communicative needs of learners. The term “communicative” attached itself to program that used a notional-functional syllabus based on needs assessment, and the language for specific purposes movement was launched. Other European developments focused on the process of communicative classroom language teaching. Meanwhile, in the United States, Hymes (1971) had reacted to Chomskys characterization of the linguistic competence of the ideal native speaker and, retaining Chomskys distinction between competence and performance, proposed the term “communicative competence” to present the ability to use language in a social context, to observe sociolinguistic norms of appropriateness. Communicative language teaching derives from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes, at least, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and educational research. It starts from a theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop students communicative competence. This communicative competence does not only involve the students ability to deal correctly with language usage, but also includes the ability to use it appropriately in a real situation. Language teaching is inextricably linked with language policy. The selection of methods and materials appropriate to both the goals and the context of teaching starts with an analysis of learners needs and styles of learning, socially defined. As has already been mentioned previously, the central theoretical concept on communicative language teaching is “communicative competence”, a term introduced into discussions of language use and second or foreign language learning in the early 1970s, and developed in the 1980s and the 1990s.2.2 CLT in ChinaIn China, foreign language teaching methods are influenced by the language teaching methods abroad, and on the other hand, governed by the social needs. They fall into two schools, the traditional school and the reform school. The traditional school mainly refers to the grammar translation method which emphasizes developing students grammatical competence while the reform school mainly refers to the communicative approach. CLT was introduced into China in the early 1980s and has become popular since then. Particular attention has been paid in recent years to the cultural appropriateness of the communicative approach as its goals and procedures have been imported into the non-western cultures. “Cultural appropriateness” is a term which is relevant to both institutions such as schools and the wider society which forms their context. In China, for example, the school culture of teacher-centered classrooms with a focus on the transmission of knowledge has been influenced partly by wider cultural notions of the teachers authority as expert and leader. The adoption of CLT in China in the past decades have raised quite a few important issues such as teacher training, materials development, class size, understanding of authenticity, and testing and evaluation. Of course the hottest issue is whether CLT is appropriate to local contexts and cultures, and how it might be adapted and used by teachers and learners in different teaching situations.2.3 Traditional English Teaching Style Traditional English language teaching pattern can be generalized as textbook-centered and classroom-based. The textbook is the only resource for both teachers and students. In a most common English class a teacher usually starts with explaining the new words and phrases of a new text, and then the content in the text. While explaining each paragraph, he may add new language points or point out some important grammatical knowledge. To make students acquainted with the language points and grammatical knowledge, he may organize them to do some relative practice or drills and check answers. After explaining the text, the teacher may give some assignments (usually from the exercise part following the text) to students and finally correct their homework. Thats how teachers organize the class using a textbook in a classroom. What students need to do is listen to the teachers explanation and take notes and review the old text and preview a new one. In this teaching pattern, the classroom is the basic place for students to learn knowledge from the teacher and the textbook. Students previewing and reviewing and some extracurricular learning activities are supplementary to classroom learning, so not compulsory. If a student makes good preparation before a class, he may have some questions and general ideas about the text in mind. While he listens to his teachers explanation he can get more than those who have no ideas at all. If he reviews what he learns in the class regularly and repeatedly, he will surely obtain a good result from this helpful learning process. On the contrary, if a student doesnt form such a learning habit and greatly relies on teachers instructions, he may possibly get less from the classroom teaching. So it is a common phenomenon that students sitting in the same classroom have quite different results in learning. The key to the problem doesnt lie in the teachers work but lies in the students initiation and learning habits. Students dont bother to set up their own goals or make up their study plan or arrange their own daily learning activities, or may be weekly activities or monthly activities, for what they should learn and how to learn are absolutely under their teachers control. In the classroom teaching pattern, there is no way to distinguish teaching from learning in the sense of time because students learning activities are involved in teachers teaching activities. In a broader sense, that is, if the forty-five minutes in a class can be extended to the preparation stage, teachers teaching activities are ahead of students learning activities. A great problem arising from this kind of English language teaching pattern is that students are used to waiting passively at the receivers end instead of actively producing new things.English is learned rather than taught. That is what is wrong with Chinas English teaching. Great deals of human resources have been put into futile English teaching. A surprising waste, isnt it? However it is very difficult to get corrected with the traditional English teaching. So we have to take every effort to break away with the traditional teaching style. The English teachers are doctors and English learners are patients. Doctors are supposed to produce a very helpful remedy for the patients. How? Sometimes he or she can do it by himself or herself. But in most cases doctors have to meet one another to decide on a remedy plan for a specific group of learners. Maybe various teaching expert panels are needed. To create an environment for English learners is very important.2.4 Traditional English teachersStudents often think of English teachers mainly as people who know everything about English and explain it all to students. In this way of thinking, the English teacher is a “sage” more or less like Confucius, and the main role of the teacher is to give her/his knowledge to students. This view of English teachers is not entirely wrong; after all, English teachers do know more about English than their students do, and part of the job of English teachers is to teach students what they know about English. However, in many ways, an English teacher is more like a “coach” or a “piano teacher” than a “sage” Why? The main reason is that learning English doesnt just involve gaining knowledge. An equally important part of learning English is developing skills, and skills can only be developed by practice. Just as a coach cant make someone a good runner just by explaining how to run, an English teacher cant make students good speakers (readers, writers, etc.) of English just by explaining English to them. Instead, like a coach, a teacher must help students learn how to practice effectively, and also encourage them to practice a lot even when the teacher is not around. Sometimes people criticize the traditional teaching method in China, saying it is too much like” stuffing ducks” (teachers stuff students with knowledge).Learners in classrooms characterized by a transmission model of learning are cast in a relative passive role. They are passengers, being carried forward in the learning experience by the teacher. In language classrooms operating within such a transmission mode, learners practice patterns provided by teachers, textbooks, and tapes. They are thus cast into passive, reproductive roles. Rather than learning how to use language creatively themselves, they spend most learning time copying and reproducing language written down by others. They learn how to communicate in model and predictable situations, but they dont learn how to respond appropriately in novel and authentic communicative situations. That is to say that in traditional language classrooms, teachers chiefly teaches students about language and its rules, they learn facts rather than how to use it communicatively to express ideas.3. Roles of English Teacher in CLT 3.1 Classification of Teacher Roles in CLTIf all the English teachers commit to the teacher roles indicated by Communicative language teaching theory, they can help their students to master English successfully. In the book A Course in English Language Teaching, the expert Ma Tongmei divided teacher roles into six categories:1. The controller: An appropriate degree of control by the teacher over the class is vital in formal language teaching. The teacher controls the pace so that activities run smoothly and efficiently. For instance, when students do skimming and scanning tasks, it is very important for the teacher to control the time. When doing lockstep activities the teacher controls the whole class so that everyone has an equal chance. When students do production activities, the teachers control can make sure the students use certain target language items and their production has a degree of accuracy.The advantages of the teachers control mean the degree of control. Over-control will do no less harm to students than no control at all. Besides, different activities need a different degree of control. Some teachers use terms like controlled practice, half-controlled practice, and free practice to indicate where control is needed and where control should be