1. DESCRIBING
TEACHERS
JEREMY HARMER, 2001

2. WHAT IS A TEACHER?
 How they see themselves:
 Actors
 Orchestral conductors
 Gardeners
 According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of
English: “teaching means to give (someone) knowledge or
to instruct or train (someone)”.
 According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English: “to show somebody how to do something or to
change somebody’s ideas”.

3. LEARNER-CENTRED
TEACHING
 Influenced of humanistic and communicative theories.
 Learners’ needs and experience central to the
educational process.
 Students’ needs should drive the syllabus.
 Heart of language course: students’ learning
experiences and their responses to them.
 Good lesson: student activity taking place.
 Teacher: no longer the giver of knowledge, but the
facilitator and the resource for the students to draw
on.

4. LEARNER-CENTRED
TEACHING
 Special qualities needed for teachers:
 Maturity
 Intuition
 Educational skills
 Openness to student input
 Greater tolerance of uncertainty

5. THE ROLES OF A
TEACHER
 Teachers’ role may change from one activity to
another, or from one stage of an activity ot another.
 All roles, aim to facilitate the students’ progress in
some way or other.
Controller Participant
Organiser Resource
Assessor Tutor
Prompter Observer

6. CONTROLLER
 Teachers in charge of the class and of
the activity.
 They take the rolls, tell students
things, organise drills, read aloud.
 Teacher-fronted classroom.
 In many educational context, this is
the most common teacher role.

7. CONTROLLER
 Moments when acting as a controller
makes sense:
 Announcements need to be made
 Order has to be restored
 Explanations are given
 Question-answer session

8. CONTROLLER
DRAWBACKS
 Denies students access to their own
experiencial learning by focusing everything
on the teacher.
 Cuts down on opportunities for students to
speak.
 Lacks of variety in activities and classroom
atmosphere.
 Denies teachers and students many other
possibilities and modes of learning.

9. ORGANISER
 Organising something is to get students involved,
engaged and ready.
 Organising students to do various activities such as:
 Giving them information
 Demonstrating what is going to happen
 Guiding them in the performance of the activities
 Grouping students
 Closing things down when it is time to stop
 Organising content feedback: questions or detailed
discussion of what has taken place.

10. ORGANISER
DRAWBACKS
 If instructions are not clear, students will not
understand what thery are supposed to do and may not
get full advantage from an activity.
Engage
instruct (demonstrate)
initiate the activity
organise feedback

11. ASSESSOR
 A teacher acts as an assessor when:
 Offers feedback and correction
 Grades students in various ways
 Indicates whether or not students are getting
their English right
 Students need to know what for and how they are
being assessed.
 In this way, they will have a clear idea of what
they need to concentrate on.

12. ASSESSOR
DRAWBACKS
 Missuse of fairness.
 When facing a poor performance and
constructive criticism is not offered,
students tend to feel extremely unhappy.
 We should not make them feel they are
being unfairly judged.
 A bad grade can be made far more
acceptable if it is given with sensitivity and
support.

13. PROMPTER
 When we prompt we need to:
 Do it sensitively and encouragingly, but
with discretion.
DRAWBACKS
 If we are too adamant we risk taking
initiative away from the students.
 If we are too retiring we may not supply the
right amount of encouragement.

14. PARTICIPANT
 Teachers may want to join in an activity not as
teachers, but as participants in their own right.
 For the teacher, participating in an activity is
more enjoyable than acting as a resource.
 Students will enjoy having the teacher with
them.
DRAWBACKS
 Teachers can easily dominate the proceedings.

15. RESOURCE
 Teachers will want to be helpful and available.
 No teacher knows everything about the language.
 Teachers can be one of the most important
resources students have when they:
 Ask how to say or write something
 Want to know what a word or phrase means
 Want to know information in the middle of an
activity about that activity or where to look for
something.

16. TUTOR
 Teachers working with individuals or small groups.
 Pointing students in directions they have not yet
thought of taking.
 The term implies a more intimate relationship than
that of the controller or organiser.
 Teachers will allow more personal contact and real
chance for students to feel supported and helped.
DRAWBACKS
 Not to intrude too much (learner autonomy) or too
little (unhelpful).

17. OBSERVER
 Observe what students do, especially in oral activities:
opportunity to give useful ind. and group feedback.
 Also, observe our materials and activities.
 Observing for success often gives us a different feel for
how well our students are doing.
 Being alert to the effect our actions are having: trying to
tease out feelings and reactions in the classroom.
 One area of teacher development involves just this
aspect. Built into an action research cycle: posing
questions about what we do in the classroom and using
observation to answer them.

18. WHICH ROLE?
 Teachers need to be able to
switch between the various roles,
judging when it is appropriate to
use one or the other.
 Teachers need to be aware of
how they carry out the selective
role and how they perform it.

19. THE TEACHER AS
PERFORMER
 Different teachers perform differently.
 Each teacher has many different performance styles
depending on the situation.
 Besides, we should describe how teachers should play
their roles:
ACTIVITY HOW THE TEACHER SHOULD PERFORM
1.- Team game Energeticaly, encouragingly, clearly, fairly
2.- Role-play Clearly, encouragingly, retiringly,
supportively
3.- Teacher reading aloud Commandingly, dramatically, interestingly
4.- Whole-class listening Efficiently, clearly, supportively

20. THE TEACHER AS
TEACHING AID
 Mime and gesture: the ability of using our
body to convey meaning and atmosphere.
They work best when they are exaggerated.
 Language model: reading passages aloud can
capture imagination and mood like nothing
else.
 Provider of comprenhensible input: language
students understand the meaning of, slightly
above their own production level. Modeling
and scaffolding. Combination of STT and TTT.