IX Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2017

As living in the XXI century, such phenomenon like globalization, nanotechnologies definitely make sense in our life. Nowadays all the changes, happening in the world arena, immediately influence in a number of spheres such as the political end, economic basis, and sociocultural aspect. The field of education is not an exception too. In opposite, from day to day the role of education become much more fundamental and dominant. An upbringing of the new generation, ready for intercultural communication and competitiveness is the key to constant development along with the production of an effect. An initial step of this project is the formation of future teachers, who are full – qualified, competent and highly – motivated. It has been said that teachers who have been teaching for twenty years may be divided into two categories: those with twenty years’ experience and those with one year’s experience repeated twenty times. In other words, sheer time on the job does not ensure fruitful experience and professional progress. Successful teachers are those who continue to develop throughout their professional lives (it is based on the concept of life – long education): the completion of a pre – service course and initial qualification are only the beginning.

Nowadays Kazakhstan can be described as a polylingual and multicultural state, where the education system takes a leading position. Today it is aimed at providing an all - round education, with the focus on cross – cultural communication and polylingualism. The last one takes its realization through the national cultural draft “Trinity of languages”. For the first time, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan announced this idea in October 2006 at the XII session of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan. N.A.Nazarbayev stressed that this project should build up new Kazakhstan in the new world. Our state should be perceived throughout the world as a highly educated country, whose population is aware of three languages. They are Kazakh as the state language, Russian – the language of international communication and English – the language of successful integration into the global economy [1].

First of all, one of the main steps, in order to achieve this goal, is the preparation of the relevant COMPETENT staff. In short, it means that our system of education needs sorely highly – qualified teachers, who have mastered not only native and foreign languages speaking, professional knowledge, but also ready for intercultural communication, creative and critical thinking. That is why, in this article, I would like to focus on a couple of basic issues: to clarify the role of the teacher of foreign languages, which is currently in demand, and to explore what does it mean to be an ELT professional.

At all times, the question related to the teacher’s role can be considered as the point at issue. Still the concept of ‘role’ or to put it differently, role theory is a very large topic on which a great deal has been written. One of the earliest investigations, related to this issue, were beyond the scope of Bartram and Walton works in 1991. [2] They identified the teacher as:

 

Time - keeper

Social organizer

 

The classification below is widely accepted as traditional conception, whether the focus is on the teacher, or in other words, where teacher – centered approach is applied. However, after rapid changes take place when later the whole process of education turn to the student – centered instruction. In such type of lessons, the notion of the ‘learner – centered classroom’ takes a crucial role. Furthermore, Tudor, as one of the founders of the ‘learner – centered classroom’ suggests that apart from the fact that the teacher is ‘knower’ and ‘activity organizer’, these roles are not dominant. [3] It is much more significant to prepare learners for awareness of goals and language, to analyze learners’ needs, to select material, to transfer responsibility and to involve students.

As far as time passes, day in and day out advanced technologies and innovations are adapted, up to date approaches and methods in teaching EFL are created, in general, the whole system of education, its aims, focus groups, conditions undergo impressive changes. Apparently, it directly influences on teachers’ duties. Modern educational experts face more serious and global issues, consequently, their objects become more complicated. The range of their professional duties and responsibilities also expand greatly. The set of mentioned below features are interwoven with time – honored capacities and included in the list of the language teacher’s potential roles proposed by Harmer [4]. The first two positions are relatively old, which describe the teacher as a controller, who are in charge of everything that goes on in the classroom and as assessor or examiner. The last one includes correction and grading. The following three roles, such as prompter, participant, and tutor directly deal with the teaching process on the lesson as encouraging students by ‘nudging’ them forward, organizing activities and paying attention to individuals and small groups working on longer pieces of work. The following two positions are the teachers as tutors and observers that allow them to give feedback, to evaluate materials and methods.

All of the authors’ classifications mentioned below were taken as the theoretical footing, which I tried to put into realization in practice during studying at the university. From my personal observation of enlightening EFL at the gymnasium school # 60, Humanities college and at the Nazarbayev Intellectual school made a great emphasis on my personality within teaching. An experience that I had gained in different educational institutions helped me greatly to analyze and comprehend current status of teaching EFL, furthermore, it gave me an opportunity to observe the collaboration of teachers – students and teacher - teacher within staff in various conditions and situations. However primarily I focused on the qualities, features specific to modern EFL teachers. As a result, the following inference is drawn:

The term ‘role’ of the present - day EFL teachers in the context of polylingualism is very complex, consisting of the range of functions. Up to now, balanced co – existence of teachers’ potentially multiple roles is crucial than ever, where a couple more positions should be added to the existing ones, such as the teacher as LEADER, the teacher as a CONSTANT explorer and the teacher as CHAMELEON. The last point means the capacity to adapt to new circumstances, particularly over time, is a vital one. No teaching or learning situation is really static. Political and educational circumstances change, as do resources available for teacher training; views of the methodology change, as does the language itself; research is gradually disseminated; teachers develop; learners expectations change. In this case, Wright’s brief remark can be mentioned, ‘there is more to a role than just doing a job’. [5]

Consequently, the main factor of becoming a successful highly – qualified educational expert contains the permanent co – existence and improvements of teaching practice and professional development within the frame of life – long education.

The model of modern EFL teacher can be illustrated by the following scheme:

 

LEADER

 

 

CONSTANT EXPLORER

 

 

ACTIVE PARTICIPANT

 

 

CHAMELEON

TUTOR

 

 

OBSERVER

 

 

PROMPTER

 

 

ENCOURAGER

 

 

COUNCILLOR

 

Obviously, not all of these developments have taken place simultaneously; the various aspects of change have had differential impact and usefulness, and have naturally occurred at different times in different contexts, as we will be aware of our own teaching situation.

Literature:

1. Nazarbayev, N. A. (2007). The message of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Nursultan Nazarbayev to the people of Kazakhstan “New Kazakhstan in the new world”, Astana.

2. Bartram, M. & Walton, R. CORRECTION – Mistake Management: a positive approach for language teachers.Hove: Language Teaching Publications. 1991, p.104

3. Tudor, I. 1993. Teacher roles in the learner-centred classroom. English Language.Teaching Journal, 47, 1, pp. 22 31.

4. Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English language teaching. Essex, England: Longman.

5. Tony Wright. Roles of teachers and learners. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p.5

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