Transformation Of Teachers' Role And Development Of Students' Inquiry Learning

Teachers are one of the most important factors in learning. They have very powerfulinfluences on inquiry learning development of their students, and there is no exception in thesituation of foreign language learning. Since the reform, scale has been enlarged and greatprogress has been made in foreign language teaching and education. However, the currenteducation in the situation in China cannot meet the need of the development of economy andsociety. There is a great gap between them. This requires teachers to transform their roles ontheir teaching, observe their actions in class, evaluate the results, and do some research, that is,how do teachers develop and fulfill themselves, form their own beliefs, change themselvesand make every decision reasonable. But in the teaching practice, few teachers transform theirroles. Many of them believe their roles are to monitor teaching. They do not see themselves asfacilitators. They not only neglect their roles of mediators, but also neglect learners' inquiry. According to the social constructivist theory, teachers should emphasize students' activerole and allow them to form meaningful responses. As mediators, teachers are supposed tohelp students to react properly to meaningful language input, facilitate them in graspinglearning strategies and controlling their own action and create suitable leaning surroundings,which require teachers transform themselves. This paper discusses how teachers' beliefs affectstudents' inquiry-based learning. Moreover, some conductive suggestions are put forward as to how teachers shouldrealize their role of mediators, facilitators, cooperators and roles variety and how students canbe helped to develop their inquiry-based learning.