Reorientation Of Teachers’ Roles With Multimedia Computer Assisted Language Learning In Senior Middle Schools

With the development of modern technology, computer and other multimedia equipments have long been applied in the foreign language teaching. At the beginning of this period, they are mainly applied in college foreign language teaching. With more and more reforms in senior middle school foreign language teaching, middle school Multimedia Computer Assisted Language Learning (MCALL) has been a buzz phrase in the recent years, especially for a less developed region like Inner Mongolia both in economy aspect and educationally. In senior middle school foreign language teaching, it is more essential to arouse learners’ interest and promote their learning efficiency with the help of the modern technology and eventually help them to acquire the basic skills of the target language. This requires the educators to reorient and adjust the roles that a teacher should have in foreign language teaching, especially in MCALL.In this paper, the author works on the reorientation of foreign language teachers’ roles in MCALL environment in senior middle schools through practical research and data analyses. In the new teaching environment, teachers are no longer the controllers of a class, but need to change different roles according to the teaching requirement and environment. In this paper, six roles of a language teacher will be introduced by the author; they are the theoretician role, the innovator role, the motivator role, the gatekeeper role, the counselor role and the professional role. Through the analyses of these six roles, the author comes up with the "circulation hypothesis on the reorientation of teachers’ roles in MCALL environment". The author deems that the six roles can be divided into three stages:the first stage:the theoretician role and the innovator role, the second stage:the motivator role and the gatekeeper role, the third stage:the counselor role. The professional role goes through the whole three stages of teaching. Furthermore, these three stages are in a dynamic circulation process. These hypotheses are helpful for each educator to choose the proper roles in different stages of learning and in different teaching environments.