Teach English in Yangchun Zhen - Hanzhong Shi

Teachers play a crucial role in helping individual learners to develop themselves professionally and personally. This larger role of ‘teacher’ contains many smaller roles – as analyser, planner, organizer, motivator, mentor, assessor - that help teachers to identify learners’ needs, plan their teaching, teach effectively, assess learners’ progress and evaluate self-teaching. In order to identify learners’ needs, skills and ability, teachers needs to be analyzers. They need to know learners’ ages and their learning level for each age stage, their interests, their motivation and expectation in learning, their different learning styles, the learning and life experience, language levels, learners’ behaviour problems and cultures. By doing this, the teacher will be prepared to plan their teaching and identify the appropriate learning materials for learners. As planners and organizers, teachers need to ensure well-structured and systematic teaching and learning. They need to develop and organize detailed lesson plans and accompanying teaching and learning materials to ensure that each step of a lesson is prepared. Teachers also play the role of critical thinkers to identify the right level of learning materials, context-appropriate content, and relevant activities that meet the needs of all learners and help them to achieve their learning objectives. In the teaching stage, teachers are organizers, managers, time keepers, observers or monitors, models, motivators and learners. While the teachers are teaching, they need to organize learners, activities, materials, and the classroom. They also need to manage the lesson, the time that they have set for each step of the learning process, manage learners’ behaviour and materials to be used effectively. Moreover, teachers also play their roles as observers during teaching, monitoring students work and progress and providing support where needed. Teachers model the lesson to help learners to make sense of their learning. In addition, teachers need to find ways to motivate all learners in order to ensure their full engagement and participation in the learning process. Teachers may use different motivation techniques to involve learners in their learning. Teachers play the role of learners because they may also learn from learners’ sharing, questions and thoughts. Throughout the learning process, teachers play their roles as assessors. They need to assess learners before, during and after learning in order to accurately track progress. Before learning, teachers need to assess learners’ prior knowledge and skills. Based on the assessment, teachers can connect the prior knowledge and skills to the learning process. After learning, teachers assess whether the learners can confidently apply the new skills and knowledge they have learnt. Assessment after learning helps learners to track their own learning and helps teachers to know how they need to support learners to be successful in their learning. To evaluate self-teaching, teachers need to play the role as an evaluator. During teaching, teachers need to record observations about learning and teaching performance which they can review later to evaluate aspects such as lesson plan and structure, activities and methods used, language and instruction used, learners’ response and reaction, learners’ progress and result. Teachers can use this evaluation to make improvements to help learners succeed. In conclusion, the role of teachers mean playing many different roles in order to inspire and support learners to reach their goals. Teachers need to continually balance and adjust the application of these roles to suit each context and each group of learners that they encounter.