As one of the two human components in the classroom interaction between teacher and students, today’s teacher is not merely a knowledge conveyer who is supposed to conduct the class. Rather, he/she is expected to perform various tasks in his/her classroom. As Harmer (1992: 235) comments, the language teacher can apply a variety of activities that range from tightly controlled accurate reproduction work to free communicative activities; from controlling reading to extract specific information to the more communicative jigsaw of listening and reading.
Consequently, he points out that the way the teacher behaves will change according to the nature of the activities. The various roles of the language teacher are listed by Harmer as follows.
2.2.1. The teacher as controller
A controller stands at the front of the class like a puppet-master or mistress controlling everything. Teachers as controllers are in complete charge of the class.
They control not only what the students do, but also when they speak and what language they use. The introduction of new language, where it makes use of accurate reproduction and drilling techniques, needs to be carefully organized. Thus the instruct-cue-nominate cycle is the perfect example of the teacher acting as controller.
A teacher who successfully plays the role of a controller usually possesses a certain indefinable quality which attracts and motivates students. They had interesting things to say and do which held students’ attention and provided
enthusiasm. In the appropriate stage of the lesson, the teacher, talking at the students’ level of comprehension, is the most important source students have for roughly-tuned comprehensible input.
Certainly, the controller role, with all its advantages, should never be the only one that a teacher uses.
2.2.2. The teacher as assessor
The role of the teacher as an assessor is not limited to a stage of the lesson.
Harmer (1992: 237) affirms that a major part of the teacher’s job is to assess the students’ work, to see how well they performed. He reports that not only is this important pedagogically, but the students quite naturally expect it, even after communicative activities.
Two types of assessment are correction and organizing feedback.
Correction can also be divided into two levels namely correction and gentle correction, while organizing feedback contains content feedback and form feedback for each activity.
Correction is usually used in the accurate reproduction stage, for pointing out where mistakes occur and helping the student to say it right. Gentle correction, on the other hand, involves showing students that a mistake has been made, without insisting that the student repeat the correct sentence or word. Gentle correction, when appropriately used, will not damage the atmosphere of pairwork or freer conversation.
Meanwhile, organizing feedback occurs when students have performed some kind of task, and the intention of this kind of assessment is for them to see the extent of their success or failure and to be given ideas as to how their (language) problems might be solved. Not only direct observation and direct interactions, but
also video and tape-recorder can be use for the purpose of analyzing the students’
performance and giving organizing feedbacks in language programs.
According to Harmer, on the cline with one end presenting the teacher as controller and the other presenting the teacher as facilitator, the three kinds of assessment are distributed as illustrated in the following figure.
Figure 2.1. Kinds of correction in the language class (Harmer 1992: 237)
2.2.3. The teacher as organizer
According to Harmer (1992: 239), perhaps the most important and difficult role the teacher has to play is that of organizer. The main aim of the teacher when organizing an activity is to tell the students what they are going to talk about (or write or read about), to give clear instructions about what exactly their task is, to get the activity going on, and then to organize feedback when it is over. Harmer summarizes the work of a teacher as organizer in the sequence of lead-in ặ instruct (demonstrate) ặ initiate ặ organize feedback. To achieve the best effects, the teacher as organizer must think out exactly what they are going to say beforehand.
2.2.4. The teacher as prompter
Another psychology-related role of a teacher that Harmer (1992: 241) mentions is the role of teacher as prompter with these words:
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
correction organizing feedback
gentle correction
Facilitative Controlling
or when they are confused about what to do next. This is one of the teachers’
important roles, the role of a prompter.
However, he also reminds us that the role of prompter has to be performed with discretion, and that teachers should only help when it is necessary.
2.2.5. The teacher as participant
Harmer (1992: 241) argues that it is a good idea for a teacher to participate as an equal in activities, especially in those like simulations. It will probably improve the atmosphere in the class, and simultaneously gives students a chance to practice English with someone who speaks it better than they do. Nevertheless, the warning is that the teacher should be careful not to dominate, since the students will both allow and expect this to happen when the teacher participates. It is up to the teacher to make sure this does not happen.
2.2.6. The teacher as a resource
Harmer (1992: 242) underlines that even when students are doing genuinely communicative activities, the teacher is not left with nothing to do. The teacher becomes an assessor – although discretely – and a kind of walking resource centre.
In other words the teacher should always be ready to offer help if it is needed; they make themselves available so that students can consult when (and only when) they wish.
2.2.7. The teacher as tutor
According to Harmer (1992: 242), the role of the teacher as a tutor is a broader role than the others that have been mentioned above since it incorporates parts of some of the other roles, i.e. organizer, prompter and resource.
The teacher is playing the role of a tutor when he or she acts as a coach and a resource where students are involved in their own work, and call upon the teacher mainly for advice and guidance. The teacher as tutor also gives advice about how to get the most out of students’ learning and what to do if they want to study more.
2.2.8. The teacher as investigator
When the teacher wants to develop their own skills and hope for a gradually deepening insight into the best ways to foster language learning, he or she will play the role of an investigator, together with other roles. Language teachers can develop by themselves or with their colleagues by investigating what is going on, observing what works well in class and what does not, trying out new techniques and activities and evaluating their appropriacy and effectiveness. (Harmer 1992: 243)
2.3. BROWN’S ECOLOGY: A SUMMARY OF THE LEARNERS’