Teacher’s Role in Communicative Approach

Facilitator: Facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts.

Independent participant: The teacher should act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group. It includes a set of secondary roles for the teacher: organizer of resources and as a resource himself; guide within the classroom procedures and activities; researcher and learner.

Needs analyst: The teacher assumes a responsibility for determining and responding to learners’ language needs. This may be done informally and personally through one-to-one sessions with students, in which the teacher talks through such issues as the student’s perception of his or her learning style, learning asserts, and learning goals. It may be done formally through administering a needs assessment instrument, such as those exemplified in Savignon (1983). Typically, such formal assessments contain items that attempt to determine an individual’s motivation for studying the language. For example, students might respond on a 5-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) to statements like the following:

I want to study English because …

1. I think it will someday be useful in getting a good job.

2. It will help me better understand English-speaking people and their way of life.

3. One needs a good knowledge of English to gain other people’s respect.

4. It will allow me to meet and converse with interesting people.

5. I need it for my job.

6. It will enable me to think and behave like English-speaking people.

On the basis of such needs assessments, teachers are expected to plan group andindividual instruction that responds to the learners’ needs.

Counselor: The teacher is expected to exemplify an effective communicator seeking to maximize the meshing of speaker’s intention and hearer’s interpretation, through the use of paraphrase, confirmation, and feedback.

Group process manager: The teacher’s responsibility is to organize the classroom as a setting for communication and communicative activities. During an activity the teacher monitors, encourages, and suppresses the inclination to supply gaps in lexis, grammar, and strategy but notes such gaps for later commentary and communicative practice. At the conclusion of group activities, the teacher leads in the debriefing of the activity, pointing out alternatives and extensions and assisting groups in self-correction discussion.