Think about your own language learning experience. What role do you
feel the instructor played most of the time? How successful was that?
Would it have made a difference if a different role were more
prominent? Why?
(Additional comments on this post no longer earn points. Please choose a more recent entry).
(Additional comments on this post no longer earn points. Please choose a more recent entry).
In my French class, I think my teacher had the role of a director most of the time. It was quite successful since this was in high school, with an all-beginner class. He would sometimes give us some freedom to carry out the activities by ourselves (for example group work), but he would always have to check to make sure we were on track, and not doing something else (which was the case most of the time). He did not try to completely control the class though, unless it was necessary. So, he did sort of switch between controller and director, but I thought it was okay because in some cases he just had to guide the class until we understood the point ourselves. It would have made a huge (negative) difference if he had a different role, because the other roles tend to be more student-centered, and considering the situation we were in (high school, beginners, etc..), I think it is best that he was more towards the teacher-centered edge. Later, however, when we got to level 4, and he knew us all better, and the class was a lot smaller (only those that really wanted to learn took level 4), he become more of a manager or facilitator. It really depends on the students (know your students!)
ReplyDeleteI have been taking Spanish for the past year and a half. Our teacher (small class of four) is definitely a director/controller. Every class session starts with an individual conversation between the teacher and each student in turn. Then the homework assigned is reviewed. Next, she either reviews old material or presents new material and then we work in our books. The last half of the class is spent in either drills or games, finishing up with another individual conversation. We do a lot of pair work in this class. I think that my Spanish teacher is extremely successful with getting us to learn the language.. None of us (all adults) had ever studied Spanish before and the motivation for success was high as this was a class that we were paying for. I do not think that any of us has enough Spanish language experience to be turned 'loose' on our own and play a major role in our curriculum (that being said, she does give us choices between grammar points that we want to work on. Grammar is stressed in this class). I think that Norma's point is really valid, know your students!. We are all about the same level and so far this is working great for us.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I was in the middle school my English teacher was a typical controller. She taught us by the book.
ReplyDelete• No outside the book activities.
• No communicative activities.
• She used to tell us what to do and what is right.
• She gave us forms for writing to follow and conversations to memorize.
• She taught us grammar’s rules straight forward.
• Repetition was the main theme of the class.
• Exams were from the same materials used in class.
The effects:
• There was no room for creativity and thinking out of the box.
• Students learned their materials by heart and successes in passing the course.
• The information gained in that class did not last long that after the finals, the students could not recall what they learned easily.
• Student had no interest in self-learning, or fluency developing outside the classroom.
• The class was not taken very seriously which frustrated the teacher and made her stricter.
• Some students passed middle school without being able to list the English alphabets.
I cannot ignore the fact that the educational system back home puts pressure on the teachers to follow the lame old and usual way of teaching in order to finish the lame old and usual text book, but I think this teacher could have enliven the class by some communicative activities every now and then. She could have modified the text book’s activities in a way that puts her in a manager or reference role to give the chance for the student to think individually about the language. She also, could have thought of herself as a colleague who needs to cooperate with the student to achieve their goals. When the students feel that the teacher needs their support to get the job done without hurting them, they will be more engaged and considerate.
As an instructor, you play a lot of roles in a classroom. In my language classes, the instructor spent most of her time as a manager. She had a specific goal for each class and a plan for the exercises she wanted to us to do. She would give us projects or problems and then we would form groups and work. I thought it was pretty successful. I have a hard time imagining a traditional intermediate level US classroom with the teacher as a resource. Students are programmed to take direction from the instructor. I think in lower level language classes (or with younger kids), an instructor would need to be more directive to ensure student success.
ReplyDeleteIn my foreign language learning experience, the role of my secondary school English teachers was a controller. The English teachers made some very well-organized lesson plans using text books, and according to the preprogrammed they taught their lectures in class. There was a lot of information that the teachers should teach in a class time, so usually the classes were very intensive and just followed the lesson plan during whole class. Because most classes were controlled by teachers with the lesson plan, there was insufficient autonomy of students or extemporaneous learning from students themselves. Another teachers’ role was a resource. Sometimes when students have some questions about English grammar, structure, or phonological rules, they asked to teachers to receive correct answers. Then, teachers readily gave answer about the students’ questions.
ReplyDeleteFrom my own English learning experience, most of my English teachers are between controller and director, which means they can always control what and how much they want to teach and how students do their tasks in class. Because of the curriculum design in a semester, teachers have to cover all the knowledge points in class which leaves no time for students to have group activities or pair work. And for students, we have to consider our scores in the exams so we must concentrate on the book knowledge instead of doing any kind of classroom activities. I think this kind of teaching language is only beneficial for students’ reading and writing abilities and grammar acquisition, ignoring the listening and speaking skills as well as the necessary ability to think and to learn communicative skills. But in college studies, we have native English speakers as our oral teachers; they are manager or facilitator. Maybe it’s oral class, the main task we should do is to speak something in class, and often we are asked to have group discussion. In that progress, teachers help us to find our errors and make them correct, and they seldom give us much input. So I think different teaching contents need different roles; focusing on students’ need and abilities is important.
ReplyDeleteThe first four courses of Spanish I took were at a community college and the majority of my classes were generally rowdy and full of students who didn't mind showing their disdain for school, when they even chose to show up. I think that because of this environment, the teacher was forced into the role of "controller". If she hadn't been a controller she would have been eaten alive. Every time she tried to let the class have some autonomy and do group work no one would talk about anything related to the course. In a perfect world, the students would be courteous enough to act like adults, but at this place, that was never going to happen. When I came to UTA, however, I saw the teachers more as facilitators. In an Advanced Spanish Conversation class, my professor struck a good balance between the roles of facilitator and manager, she stands out in my mind as being a very effective instructor. The class was based around students grouping up and talking about controversial issues. The instructor did a great job of keeping us on task and helping us out at the same time by migrating from group to group and making sure we are doing ok, and fueling the conversations as necessary. I would say she also performed the role of manager because the tasks given were always very clearly explained and purposeful while giving students the freedom to talk about what they wanted as well.
ReplyDeleteIn my current language class, the teacher generally assumes the role of director/manager. She gives us short pair work discussions or activities, and then does grammar lessons via PowerPoint. However, she does also fit the role of resource when she walks around during our discussions, ready to answer language questions (which may or may not be directly related to the grammar point being focused upon). These roles seem to be fairly successful in a grammar-focused course; however, I think that we students could benefit from some long-term group activities. These could take the form of either longer daily pairwork activities, or group projects that stretch over a few class periods. With these activities, the teacher could assume the role of facilitator to get us started, and then as resource as we continue with the projects. With the teacher stepping back into a less prominent role, students would have a chance to ‘discover’ rules and commit them to memory by negotiating meaning and assisting other students.
ReplyDeleteMy Cantonese teachers played the role of resource. I approached them and asked them to teach me Cantonese. Every week I’d come to them with a list of English words I wanted to know the Cantonese for and Cantonese words I’d heard and wanted to know the English for. They would tell me, I’d have more questions which would lead to stringing those isolated words into phrases, and at the end of the lesson they would record for me the words we’d gone over so I could listen to them and memorize them throughout the week.
ReplyDeleteThis was a fairly successful approach since I was highly motivated and they were knowledgeable and helpful. It might have made a difference if they were more a facilitator, helping me learn to communicate on my own rather than just being a resource. Then I might have been forced to use my Cantonese more under their tutelage, forcing me to string my own sentences together and thus improving my tones and cementing the grammar structure and phrases since I’d be discovering them myself under their watchful eye.
In my language classes in the past, the role that my teacher played seemed to change a lot. In elementary school, when I was learning Spanish, my teacher seemed to act more of the controller, regardless of proficiency level. I think this probably had a lot to do with the fact that we were all less than 10 years old. Through middle school and high school, however, the teachers became less of controllers and moved more towards the manager position. Then, most recently, in my college courses, the professor played more of a facilitator role, rather than a controller. To the best of my memory, this was the case regardless of the proficiency level. More often than not, the professor was a facilitator. She did take on different roles in different situations, but she always defaulted back to facilitator.
ReplyDeleteIn my college language learning classes my teachers role was as a manager. I think the role worked well with the class level but I would have liked to see my teachers add more roles to their teaching. Though most of the time they were managers adding the roles of facilitator and resource would help with student learning. I am not saying that they didn't use these roles but I would like to have seen more of these roles used in the classroom. I think the adding the role of a facilitator would have let me discover the language more and would have helped me push myself to want to learn more on my own time. I think adding the role of resource would make me feel comfortable coming to them for more information on the language and the culture. Students can be intimidated by teachers and I'm the type of student who takes a while to warm up to a teacher so having a teacher thats open to language learning and the occasional "stupid" question will definitely help in my language learning!
ReplyDeleteStefani Goode
Most of my language-learning experience has been at a fairly basic level, and the teachers have for the most part acted as directors, dictating every moment and detail of class. This was a half-way successful approach in the academic settings such as my undergraduate because quite a bit of classroom control was necessary, individual intrinsic motivation was low, and the students needed more direct coaching to grasp concepts. The drawback, of course, was that while we could recite lots of verb endings I don't think anyone left those classes able to actually hold a conversation. I did have one professor in my highest-level Spanish course who acted more as a manager than as a director. I really appreciated the fact that in that class we, as students, actually got the chance to interact with the language a little more in a meaningful way and in groups or on our own instead of simply reciting memorized material. The most frustrating scenarios I've encountered were in my attempts to learn the Korean language. I attempted to learn from four different teachers at different times, and although the class size was very small we still weren't given the chance for meaningful or creative interaction with the language. I believe there are several reasons for the limitations of those experiences, and they did have positive aspects as well as negative ones. However, those experiences convinced me that in situations where I have students who are eager to learn I would like to engage their input and creativity as much as possible and work more as a facilitator so that they can become independent in their use of language rather than being tethered to the teacher-as-director.
ReplyDeleteIn studying Spanish, my teachers earlier on were controllers or directors for the most part. Things were typically done by the book. However, the farther along I got, the more the teachers were facilitators. By the time I was studying Spanish literature, the teacher was definitely more of a facilitator and resource. The students were discussing the material on their own and the teacher was there for help if we didn't understand something. This is successful because higher-level students are in need of less structure than lower-level students. Additionally, advanced students need more practice with open-ended activities where they're allowed to produce more without teacher assistance. After all, using language in real life is the ultimate "open-ended" activity! If we are too controlling of especially advanced students, we're limiting their ability to function in English outside of the classroom.
ReplyDelete-Debby Adams
All of my high school language instructors and my beginning level military instructors fell into the controller and occasionally the director role categories. When my classes got to the upper levels in my military language instruction, the instructor role became more of a facilitator/resource. I honestly believe the roles that all of my teachers took on were age and proficiency level appropriate and as effective as they can be. With the students in my high school classes, I still find it hard to believe that any other role would have worked without the teacher losing control of room entirely. And as far as my military classes are concerned I think that a director/manager role might have been much more effective even in the beginning levels; we all had lots of motivation to truly excel in the class and gain automaticity: it was our job. With the controller military instructors it was hard to ask questions even if they were related to the subject matter, simply because it “deviated from the plan.” We would have gained an even better understanding of the language had we been allowed to deviate just a little.
ReplyDelete-Melody Bree
Jarrod Duarte
ReplyDeleteMy professor falls more into the director and controller role categories. In my case, I needed to learn grammar and she taught this well, and similar to the other posts here, I do not think a facilitator role would have worked as the students in the class still did not have a command of the language or just did not want to try, so self or pair learning or non director/controller learning was difficult.
Jarrod
Throughout my undergraduate college career, I took many spanish classes. I would have to say that the majority of my teachers took the role as director or controller.
ReplyDeleteIn many of my beginner classes, the teachers rarely strayed from the role as a controller. Most activities we did were controlled by the teacher: repeating, reading aloud, answering specific questions, or practicing scripted dialogues. The teachers I had never, or very rarely, moved away from this role. Now looking back on it, I feel the class could have been more successful if the teacher took on a role closer to the "director" or manager and allow the class a little more creative flow. Instead of repeating everything like a military drill day after day, the teachers could have implemented more communicative, and less boring, activities that are still appropriate for the class level. However, I can't say that the class was UNsuccessful as a whole, because I feel I learned quite a bit from my lower level classes. I can't say, however, if I really learned a lot in those classes or if I just memorized a lot of rules and words.
In most of my upper level classes, the teachers mainly stuck with the director role in the classroom. A lot of assignments required reading, and the teacher would lead discussions the next day about the reading. However, the discussions were lead in a strict direction and if we ever strayed from that direction, the teacher would quickly get us back on track. It was never truly spontaneous discussion, and it allowed very little creativity. However, I feel I gained a lot of confidence in my speaking through this kind of activity. The discussions were easy to follow and the thought processes of all the students in the classroom weren't all over the place; everything was one cohesive flow. I found these kind of discussions easy to jump into. I didn't feel anxious or nervous to make a comment in front of the whole class. Although, I feel the teacher could have worked her way up to more of a manager or even facilitator role throughout the semester. All in all, I also can't say that these classes were unsuccessful. I feel like I got a lot out of them.