A Contrastive Study Of Expectation And Actuality Of Classroom English Teacher Roles In Junior Middle School In Village And Town In The Current Curriculum Reform

In the course of deeper implementation of the curriculum reform, with the publishment of Standards of English Curriculum, English teachers, as the key for conducting course, are confronted with huge challenge. How to change their old teaching concepts and to have a scientific reorganization about their classroom roles are the big problems which should be solved urgently for English teachers. Meanwhile, due to the much attention paid to the education in western areas, mass reform and merging of the educational source are underway like a raging fire. So, schools in village and town, lying in the interim region, are becoming the places for enrolling those rural schools. Thus it brings the teachers with different teaching levels as well as students with different learning levels, which will hinder the conduct of the curriculum reform to some degree. Therefore, teachers in this region should do more work to understand the requirements of the curriculum reform as well as students, then try to change their out-of-date concepts of teaching,teacher,student and assessment and make a scientific reorganization about teacher roles catering to the curriculum reform. If that, they can make their own contribution for the improvement of the primary English education. Integrating the above factors, the classroom roles of Middle English teachers in village and town are chosen to be the object of study. Firstly, on basis of the theoretical analysis and new requirements of the curriculum reform,15 new roles English teachers should play in classroom are summed up. Then through questionnaire and interview, we try to know both teachers'and students' expectation for teacher's roles in classroom, meanwhile, what are the teacher's actual roles. Based on above study results, the comparison between teacher's expectation and teacher's actual roles as well as teacher's actual roles and student's expectation are put forward with the purpose of trying to determine just whether they match each other respectively and in which part and in how degree the divergence exists. In virtue of the above mentioned study, some existing problems in the present Middle English classroom teaching in village and town are discussed in detail. Then a number of inspirations are followed. After that, certain reorganizations are provided to improve the effect of classroom teaching, promote the development of individual and improvement of English teachers'professional quality.It is found that:1 English teacher's roles in classroom students expect most in proper order are:"creator", "facilitator" and "motivator", while the roles they don't like most are "monitor", "assessor" and "organizer".2 In teacher's opinions, the classroom roles they should play most are "helper", "creator", "organizer", "motivator", "assessor" and "trainer", while the roles they should play least are "model", "monitor", "participant" as well as "friend".According to these results, on one hand we can know that both teacher and student show great eagerness for relaxing and enlightening classroom which could guarantee the effective learning in large degree;on the other hand, the process of learning students are expecting is full of independence and initiative. However, teachers still want to keep their leading positions.3 The actual roles English teachers play most in classroom are "instructor", "organizer", "designer", while the actual roles they play least are "motivator", "trainer" and "participant"This shows clearly that teachers are still dependent on the traditional roles and are showing their favor forward authentic states.4 Through the comparison between teacher's actual roles and their expectation, it is showed that there are 10 roles which have significant gap including "organizer", "monitor", "assessor", "trainer", "counselor", "resource", "facilitator", "participant", "friend", "creator" and "motivator". That is to say, concerning of these above roles, teacher's actual deeds could not match their own expectations to large degree.5 Through the comparison between teacher's actual roles and student's expectation, we find that only for "designer", teacher's actual role meets up student's expectation. While for the rest of 14 roles, teacher's deeds can not match student's expectations, especially for "monitor", "friend", "creator", "motivator", "trainer", "resource" and "participant".As for the above study results, it is clear that teacher don't understand student's needs of learning.The contradiction between their thinking and behavior—forward consciousness and backward deeds, puts teachers into a dilemma under the present curriculum reform. While the huger gap between teacher's actual roles and student's expectations undoubtedly reflect the truth that teachers can not understand the student's real needs for learning. Therefore, they are not able to promote students'effective learning. Most of rules where there is relatively large gap between the real and expected are newer roles like "motivator", "participant", "trainer" and "facilitator". It shows the Middle English teacher's professional quality could not meet the demands of new curriculum reform in these regions. However, the gap of some teachers'traditional roles also reflect the students'requirements for higher skills of present English teacher including the swift renewing of the knowledge, the original design of teaching structures and vivid presentation ways of knowledge.Concerning all of above problems, writer tries to offer some suggestions for the present Middle English teachers in village and town from the several following aspects, with the purpose of improving the English classroom teaching in these regions. They are the organization and design of classroom teaching; the ways to present the knowledge; the training of relevant learning strategies and the attention on students' emotion. In more detail, middle English teachers should value students'participation and creativity in design of classroom teaching; apply the multimedia teaching method to present more vivid and plentiful book knowledge as well as extensive knowledge; penetrate the application and consolidation of learning strategies into classroom teaching with the abundant understanding of student's learning situations like the style, habit as well as level; concern student's learning emotion all the time and play tactfully and properly "participant", "friend", "model", "facilitator" and "motivator" and so on with the purpose of arousing students' enthusiasm in nature and subtle. Meanwhile, teacher should pay enough attention to protect and stimulate students'learning motivation.All above are some plain suggestions. It is hoped that all these would be helpful for Middle English teachers in village and town to go out of such dilemma.