A Comparative Study On Students’ And Teachers’ Expectation Of Teachers’ Roles In English Classrooms

It is acknowledged that teachers play multiple and complex roles inclassroom teaching. As a result of the variety and complexity of teachers’ roles,there are some differences between students’ expectations and teachers’expectations of teachers’ roles in English classrooms. It has been realized that thedifferences have seriously reduced the effectiveness and efficiency of teachers’roles in language teaching activities. By studying the differences of roleexpectations between students and teachers in English class, teachers will have agood understanding of their own roles and find out the students’ role expectations.Therefore, they will change their teaching beliefs and change their teaching waysin order to meet students’ needs.The present study was designed to survey the teachers’ roles in Englishclassrooms of the Third Middle School of Yichun. The participants of this studywere203senior high school students and30English teachers of the same school. Thepurpose of this research was to explore:(1) the various role expectations onteachers’ roles both from students and teachers;(2) the differences betweenstudents’ expectations and teachers’ expectations of teachers’ roles;(3) theprobable reasons of the differences between students’ expectations and teachers’expectations of teachers’ roles. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches wereemployed in this study. The SPSS19.0was employed for the statistical analysis.Descriptive analysis and independent samples t-test were used to analyze the datain this study. In qualitative study, four students from the student group and fourteachers from the teacher group were selected as interviewees.The study has revealed a number of main findings. First, both students andteachers agree that teachers should play Imultiple roles such as knowledge provider, moral guide, organizer and so on. Secondly, there are significantdifferences between students’ expectations and teachers’ expectations of teachers’roles. The teachers’ expectations are a little higher than the students’. Great differenceexist between students’ and teachers’ expectations of teachers’ roles as parental friends,creator of classroom climate, source of knowledge and classroom manager. Thirdly,the reasons that caused different expectations of teachers’ roles in Englishclassrooms were: the different learning experience of students’ and teachers’, thedifferent concepts of learning and teaching between students and teachers, thelack of communication between these two groups.Based on the findings of the study, some suggestions for language teachingare put forward. For instance, the conceptions of teaching and learning should beenhanced; the knowledge and skills in language teaching and learning should beimproved; more communication between students and teachers should beincreased; changing roles constantly according to actual situations is suggested;and learning for whole life is the main point.