Lakhasly

Teachers play multiple roles to facilitate learning, each with benefits and drawbacks. The "Controller" role, while useful for organization and instruction, can stifle student engagement and limit learning opportunities. The "Participant" role allows teachers to engage directly with activities, but risks dominating the proceedings. Finally, the "Prompter" role provides subtle support to learners, but requires careful balancing to encourage independent thinking.

Lesson 3: The Roles of a Teacher
Since the aim of all committed teachers is to facilitate learning, teachers are
called to play different roles which will help them reach their goal. However, it is worth
nothing that some of these roles come naturally to most teachers, while others have to
be thought about more carefully.
The Teacher as a Controller
When a teacher acts as a controller s /he is in charge of the class and the
activities taking place and is often leading from the front. Controllers take the register,
tell students things, organize drills and read aloud and in various ways show the
characteristics of a teacher- fronted classrom. Being a controller has less obvious
advantages.First, it denies students access to their experiental learning by focusing
everything on the teacher. Second, it cuts down on opportunities for learners to speak
because the class is acting as a whole, just few learnerswill have a chance to say
something.Third, over-reliance on transmission teaching can result in lack of variety in
activities and classroom atmosphere in general.Of course, there are a lot of instances
when acting as a controller makes sense. For example,when giving examples,
organising question and answer work,lecturing, making announcements or restoring
order in the class. However, it is worth noting that sticking to one mode of behaviour
deniesourselves and the learners many possibiities and modes of learning which are not
just good for learning itself, but for our learners’ enjoyment of that learn
The Teacher as a Participant
Traditionally during role-play, learners’ discussions or group activities, teachers
prefer to stand back and give their learners the chance to get on with the activities and
only interveningto offer feedback and correct mistakes. However, there are also times
when teachers want to join and even asked by learners to do so not only as teachers, but
as participants. There are good reasons why the might want to participate. For instance,
a teacher can liven things up from inside instead of prompting and organising from
outside. When everything goes well, learners enjoy having teachers with them and for
the teachers, participating is often more enjoyable than acting as a source. The danger
when teachers act as participantsis that they can easily dominate the preceedings. This
fact is not surprising as teachers have more English at their disposal compares to
learners. Equally important, teachers are perceived as authoritative figures and hence
are listened to with greater attention than other learner
The Teacher as a Prompter
Once involved in role-play, for example, learners lose the thread of what is
going on, or they may have the thread but unable to proceed for lackof vocabulary.
What should teachers do in these circumstances? Let the learners work things for
themselves or nudge them forward in a discrete and suppotive way? If teachers opt for
the latter, they are adopting some kind of prompting role. In such situations, teachers
find themselves in delicate position. On one hand they want to help but on the other
they think that it is not appropriate, at this stage, to take charge. This can be explained
by the fact that teachers are keen to encourage learners to think creatively than to hang