Section 2.

The Range of Teacher Roles

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2. The Range of Teacher Roles

Here is another very important area that is seldom studied in other TEFL courses.

2.1 There’s More to The Teacher Role than You Might Think

You’ve already studied what it takes to be a competent and effective teacher – and you
will be if you take all our ideas on board and marry them with your own ideas. However,
our focus in the previous session was mainly on KASH – the knowledge, ability, skills and
habits you require to deliver up a successful lesson.

However, unknown to many new teachers, there’s lots of other things you need to do to
ensure success. It would be pleasant if the teacher’s role focused simply on passing on
information, creating an enjoyable atmosphere and other pleasant activities. However,
it’s not as easy as that.

There are other personal and supervisor type roles and activities you will be responsible
for and these require skill and energy. They come with the job, as they say. We’ve listed
these in the next section.

2.2 The Range of Teacher Roles

So, here is a list of the additional roles and activities you’ll be involved in and responsible
for.

You may have picked up the skills necessary for these roles already in another job or
activity, so that experience will serve you well.

If not, you should consider delving into these areas before you take up your teaching
post. Our course will help you with some of these personal and supervisor type skills in
some areas, e.g. assessment, motivation, planning and you’ll likely have friends who use
other skills in their job and can help you. A good book on general supervisor or
management skills will also be of benefit, as will the Internet.

The majority of inexperienced TEFL teachers setting out for their first teaching post have
given no thought to this. Perhaps their course did not make them aware of this. It’s then
a severe shock to their system when they realise they’re unprepared in some of these
skills areas. It’s critical that you do some research into some of these skills areas if you
feel you haven’t had experience of some of them before.

The key thing is that we have now made you aware of this and you know what you have
to do!

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Typical roles you will be involved in:

Assessor: assessing progress, correcting errors, diagnosing what needs to be done in

follow-up lessons

Controller: ensuring that, at particular times, the whole class is tuned into what needs to
be done, e.g. starting off a new activity, and ensuring that classroom order is maintained

Facilitator: stepping back and allowing students to find their way along the language
journey, whilst still monitoring and motivating as needs be; knowing what facilitation
really is

Guide: guiding those who are unsure of what to do

Manager: ensuring all the nitty-gritty elements that underpin a successful lesson are
carried out, e.g. giving effective and coherent instructions, arranging the most effective
seating, ensuring instructions are carried out as planned, and that tasks are completed
as planned

Materials producer: producing more appropriate and often better materials than the
course book offers

Monitor: monitoring what’s going well and what’s not going so well and deciding what
needs to be done in a feedback session later

Motivator: motivating some of the students who may not be so keen on the activity or
who may be tired or are thinking elsewhere, perhaps due to the stresses and strains of
life outside the classroom

Needs analyst: listening to learning needs expressed by the learners. This seldom
happened in the past in a mainstream English class in the UK.

Planner/organiser: setting out the roadmap for the lesson and organising all the tasks
and activities for all the learners

Sometimes, many of these skills and roles are required in the one lesson. The
ability to seamlessly master the skill of multi-tasking will make the lesson more
fluid, more effective and more enjoyable.

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