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Every teacher asks to his/her self at least ones in his/her career: "what makes a good teacher?". Students may answer: a good teacher should be patient and kind, should involve and motivate the whole class with his/her passion. Should be able to establish good rapport between he/she and students without making favouritism or offending students about their weaknesses. Professionally speaking the teacher has to cover different roles in relation to the situation. Some stages of the lesson are "student-centred" and others are "teacher-centred". In chase the teacher is effectively in charge of the class and of the activity, he/she cover the manager role. Normally the teacher stands at the front of the class giving explanations, or reading aloud etc. Has to be charismatic and has to be able to inspire the students. Another very important part is the "assessor" role. The teacher adopts it to give feedback, corrections and evaluating and grading the students. The teacher has to be fair and consistent with all the students. Has to be sensitive to the student's reaction without over-correct because the student is learning a complete different language from his own mother tongue. The teacher need to be patient providing necessary support and ask to the learners if the work was too easy or too difficult. This process promote a genuine interaction helping the teacher to understand better student's needs. During an activity students can be stuck for ideas and the teacher has the role to help and encourage students along without take away the initiative from them. In this situation the teacher is acting as a prompter, using English language and not their native language because students can take advantages of it every time they find difficulty. Especially during activate phase the teacher has the important role to organise students to do various activities. This role involves giving instructions, organising students into pairs/groups, initiating activities and bring them to a close and organising feedback. The teacher has to be confident with this role, explaining the task and how pairs and groups function avoiding chaos. The teacher, also, can cover a more personal role such as tutoring. This role is adopted when students work individually or in pairs and they ask for some support and guidance. Also in this situation the teacher has to give equal attention and encouragement avoiding intrusion, but giving time to students to elaborate, analyse and understand the work or activity. Instead, at some point of the lesson the student's role is more centred compared to the teacher's role. In this situation the teacher has the role of participant. There are many reasons such as being able to liven activities up from the inside of the group or evening the number of students for a pair work activities with an uneven number of participants. A similar role is "resource" role in which students participate in tasks without any interruption or interference to get on with the process of learning a language for themselves. The teacher needs to be available anyway. In some situations the teacher wants to monitor the students to have information about how long an activity is likely to take and how successful has been, to understand the level and knowledge of English language of the students. During this situation the teacher maintains the distance to do not distract them from the activity, but there are occasions when the teacher may also needs to move on a little bit. The general role the teacher has is the "model". For students the teacher is a fount of all knowledge about the English language, receptive skills and productive skills. He/she has the authority and responsibility in the eyes of the students. Many adults students want to benefit from the speech or pronunciation model that the teacher offers. In conclusion a good teacher is the one who is able to switch between these roles appropriately. The role of the teacher depends on the type of activity and what the students have to achieve.
