A Study On Teachers’ Roles In Web-based College English Listening And Speaking Class

The Ministry of Education issued College English Curriculum Requirements in 2007, since then many colleges in China have built up web-based English listening and speaking teaching mode based on the computer technology in order to improve students’ listening and speaking ability. This student-centered learning mode means the diversity of teachers’roles in class. Whether teachers can play their roles well under the network environment can directly influence the quality and efficiency of students’ learning, as well as the success of college English teaching reform. Therefore, many domestic and foreign scholars studied the reorientation of teachers’ roles theoretically and most of the studies were from the perspective of teachers or scholars. However, there are few empirical studies on teachers’ roles from students’ perspective, especially teachers’roles in English listening and speaking class.Based on the theoretical supporting of teachers’ roles, a research on the discrepancy of teachers’ roles between students’ expectations and teachers’ actual behaviors in class is put forward in this study. By comparing the difference, this research aims to provide advice and reference for teachers to notice the gap between their actual performance and students’ learning demands so that they can adjust and improve their behaviors in the future teaching to meet students’ demands. The research questions are:1) What are students’expectations on teachers’ roles in English listening and speaking class under web-based learning environment? 2) What is teachers’actual role performance in web-based listening and speaking class? 3) Do teachers’ class-room behaviors match students’expectations on teachers’ roles? Are there any discrepancies between the two?With 205 non-English major freshmen and 10 English teachers from Poly Technique University as subjects, this thesis employs quantitative analysis based on questionnaires of student subjects and qualitative analysis based on interview with 20 students and 10 teachers. The data obtained from the questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS 16.0 including descriptive analysis and independent sample T-test. The results indicate that:1) Facilitator, trainer, instructor, helper and emotional supporter are the roles that students expect their teachers to play relatively more in listening and speaking class. While monitor, evaluator and resource are the roles that students expect teachers to play relatively less in class.2) Evaluator, monitor, organizer, designer and resource are the roles that teachers play most frequently in the classroom, while facilitator, emotional supporter, trainer and participant are the roles that teachers play not very often.3) Teachers’ actual behaviors didn’t match students’ expectations in all the teachers’ roles in the present study except the role of participant. Of the other 10 teachers’ roles, the degree of teachers’ behaviors is higher than that of students’ expectations in the roles of monitor, evaluator and resource, while teachers’ actual behaviors can’t live up to students’ expectations in all the other 7 roles (designer, organizer, instructor, trainer, facilitator, helper and emotional supporter).Based on the results of this study, English teachers should adjust their roles appropriately to students’ learning needs in the future, especially to behave as students’ facilitator, trainer, instructor, helper and emotional supporter. In addition, teachers should put emphasis on cultivating students’ learning autonomy, when they act as students’ evaluator, monitor, organizer, designer and resource, by means of encouraging students to do self-monitoring and self-evaluation actively and efficiently, allowing them to be involved in the class design and improving the quality of the learning materials.