On The Roles Of Teachers Of English In EFL Classroom

According to the demands of the reformation of the new English curriculum, China's English teachers in the middle schools should change their roles in EFL classroom. In other words, English teachers should reorient their roles to adapt to the development of the new situation in English teaching.This paper examines factors that affect a teacher's role from two aspects, i.e. external/objective elements and internal/subjective factors. Using multi-method qualitative research procedures, the author investigates 30 teachers of middle schools from different places in Jiangxi Province. The investigation shows that the favorable and unfavorable conditions coexist in teachers' role-reorientation in the current circumstances. The assessment mechanism based on the enrollment, the absence of necessary theoretical knowledge about EFL of English teachers, lack of sufficient resource towards EFL, large class size and students' passive learning strategies and styles inhibit English teachers to change their roles successfully in EFL classroom at present time. Thus, the author draws a conclusion that it's difficult for English teachers to successfully reorient their roles temporarily.The investigation suggests that to ensure English teachers change/reorient their roles needs to create a set of sound assessment mechanism about successful teaching, which is favorable for English teachers to take professional-development as value orientation, further deepen the reformation of the new English curriculum, provide English teachers more opportunities to receive continuing education, and improve school resource to EFL and its rate of exploitation, etc.