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A teacher needs to take on many different roles during a typical lesson, such as manager, organizer, facilitator and so on. Some stages of a lesson are teacher-centred, so a teacher is supposed to act like a controller, organizer, assessor or prompter so as to give students more guidance and knowledge that they need. While other activities of a class maybe more student-centred, so the teacher needs to be a tutor, facilitator or participant sometimes in order to encourage students to produce more English. There usually are three stages in a typical lesson: engage, study and activate. In the engage stage, the teacher is supposed to be a prompter and provide a topic for students to discuss in order to collect some information for the following class. However in the study stage, the teacher will change the role to be a controller, because he or she is professional in the language they have been teaching. What’s more, they are usually the only source of real and live English the students have known. So they are keen to get some basic and authentic knowledge from the teacher. While in the activate stage, the teacher will need to act as an assessor or facilitator. After studying some necessary knowledge, it is important for students to practice using them to produce something such as an assay, a story or a conversation with their classmates. At this part, some materials, feedback and encouragement are crucial for students. The different ages of students is another factor that will influence which role the teacher chooses to employ. I will take my teaching experience for example. My students are young children between 3 and 6 years old, they are in the stage of laying a foundation for future study. Different from older learners, kids have short span of attention but are extremely curious. Their logical thinking is still developing, So it requires teachers to prepare visual and attractive learning materials for them. In addition, playing is the nature of children. They get familiar with this world by playing and interacting with the environment where they live and study. That’s why students need some interactive activities and more chances to try by themselves. As a result of that, teachers need to take on different kinds of roles in order to take care of both their physical and psychological health. First, a teacher should be a participant. We can know them well when we join their games or activities. Second, a teacher also needs to act like a facilitator. For example, the game corner in the afternoon. Teachers prepare different types of materials for kids to choose from such as blocks, puzzles, toy kitchen equipment and give them guidance about how to play. Some students learn how to build a tall and firm building with blocks, others get a good idea about how to assign jobs when they are playing role-play games. Kids are the main characters in the games and they try to deal with social problems when they communicate with their friends. Third, sometimes a teacher has to take on the role of manager when there are some behavior problems. Also, the teacher needs to stand in front of all the kids to explain a common question or some important knowledge points. For the adult learners, they are usually highly motivated because they want to learn more, especially something to improve the quality of their life and work. In their eyes, the teacher has very professional knowledge, they want to learn from them. As a result, most of time teachers are managers and organizers. They need to present, clarify and explain the main language points. However, practice makes perfect. That means teachers are supposed to stay back a bit from now and then and give the stage to students. At this moment, they are resources, assessor and prompter. Sometimes they even join the activity to motivate and encourage students. All in all, there are many factors which may influence the changes of teachers’ roles. The age of students and different stages in a lesson are two of them which need to be considered while teaching. But the role a teacher should employ is mainly depend on what we wish the students to achieve.
