Impresionismo

6 DESCRIBING TEACHERS
A WHAT IS “TEACHING”?
It is often helpful to use metaphors to describe what teachers do. Sometimes, for example, teachers say they are like actors because they feel as if they are always on the stage. Others talk of themselves as orchestral conductors because they direct conversation and set the pace and tone. Yet others feel like gardeners because they direct plant theseeds and then watch them grow. The range of images- these and others- which teachers use about themselves, indicates the range of views that they have about their profession.
Relied heavily on drills to from these habits; substitution was built into these drills so that, in small steps, the student was constantly learning and, moreover, was shielded from the possibility of making mistakes by thedesign of the drill.
This used and miss-use of these terms can make discussions of comparative methodology somewhat confusing.
It is certainly true that children who learn the language early have a facility with the pronunciation, which is sometimes denied older learners. The point to the various studies showing that older children and adolescents make more progress those younger learners. Mayhave something you do with their increased cognitive abilities, which allow them to benefit from more abstract approaches to language teaching.
Is an ordered sequence of techniques? For example, a popular dictation procedure starts when students are put in small groups. Each group then sends one representative to the front of the class to read (and remember) the first line of a poem which has beenplaced on a desk there.

B IN THE CLASSROOM
Students can pick up much from the way their teacher walks into the room at the start of that first lesson, writes Rose Senior. The way we dress, the stance we adopt and our attitude to the class make an immediate impression on students. In this sense we need to make some kind of distinction between who are, and who we are as teachers. This does notmean that we should somehow be dishonest about who we are when we face students.
There will always be a need to be congruent, that is being honest to oneself and appropriately honest with our students.
B1 THE ROLES OF A TEACHER
Many commentators use term facilitator to describe a particular kind of teacher, one who is democratic rather than autocratic, and one who fosters learner autonomythough the use of group work and pair work and by acting as more of a resource than a transmitter of knowledge.
• Controller: when teachers act as controllers, they are in change of the class and of the activity taking place and are often “leading from the front”. Controllers take the register, tell students things, organize drills, read aloud and in various other ways exemplify the qualities of ateacher-fronted classroom.
• Prompter: sometimes, when they are involved in a role-play activity for example, students lose the thread of what is going on, or they are “lost for words”. They may not be quite sure how to proceed.
• Participant: the traditional picture of teachers during student discussions, role-plays or group decision-making activities, is of people who “stand back”from the activity, letting the learners get on with it and only intervening later to offer feedback and/or correct mistakes. However, there are also times when we might want to join in an activity not (only) as a teacher, but also as a participant in our own right.
• Resource: in some activities it is inappropriate for us to take on any of the roles we have suggested so far. Suppose that thestudents are involved a piece of group writing, or that they are preparing for a presentation they are to make to the class. In such situation, having the teacher take part, or try to control them, or even turn up to propt them might be entirely unwelcome.
• Tutor: when students are working on longer projects, such as process writing or preparation for a talk or a debate, we can work with...