I would like to know how you see teaching, because I’ve attended quite a few classes now and the teachers’ understanding of their roles were vastly different.

Some roles:

1. Teaching as informing. During class, you talk almost all the time and the students’ main task is to follow your explanations and/or take notes. After the lesson, students spend several hours reviewing what was taught, studying it so that they can learn more in the next lesson. If they didn’t learn something, it’s their fault. (popular among university teachers)

2. Teaching as making them learn. You talk for a maximum of 50% of the time; the rest of the time the students are trying out what they learned. Most of the studying, including vocabulary review and the like, takes place in-class and students do little review outside. If they didn’t learn something, it’s your fault. (the idea behind Pimsleur, Assimil and Michael Thomas programs for example)

3. Teaching as correcting. Students speak almost all the time and the main role of the teacher is to prompt them for more or to correct mistakes. Learning occurs when they need a certain word or grammar structure to express themselves. If they didn’t learn something, they didn’t need it. (the idea behind various naturalistic / immersion methods)

Are there others? How do you see your own role?

Thanks Judith for the useful topic,
I agree with you about the three methods, & I think that teacher need to identify the best method due to the famous factors “students & materials ; those with teacher make the vertices of the Educational Triangle”.

Aladdasi

i think we should use the three methods, depends on the situation and the student

Yeah, I try to do them all,But the way you shared is nice :)