27 way, three-way or four-way. Students will learn most successfully when they are
given ample opportunities to interact in conversation.
b. Teacher’s Role in Teaching Learning Process
Teachers‟ role as a prompter needs to encourage the students to achieve more, feeding in a bit of information or language to help them proceed. By doing
so, the teachers will bring about students to think creatively. At other times, they may need to act as feedback providers that help students to evaluate their
performance or as assessors that tell students how well they have done or give them grades. There are times when teachers join an activity not only as a teacher,
but also as a participant. As a participant, heshe may acts as a student when they are learning. Participating is often more instantly enjoyable than acting as a
resource. Here, teachers‟ role as observers can function well, especially in oral communicative activities. Observing for success often give teachers a different
level on how well the students are doing. Cameron 2001 has already given the general description about teaching.
She emphasizes that teaching is a process to construct opportunities for learning and to help learners take advantages of them. Cameron 2001: 242 says that:
“...teaching can never guarantee learning; all it can do is to construct opportunities for learning and to help learners take the advantages.” Therefore, in teaching-
learning process the teachers should be able to help students in constructing understanding toward the lesson.
Holtrop 1997 specifies the teacher‟s role in teaching-learning process.
Those are: demonstrations, listening, empowering, and lectures. Demonstrations, allow students to experience more fully the information and concepts the teacher
28 wants to impart during the class. Although the teacher is still the center of the
action and the dispenser of knowledge, students can more easily see what they need to know and more efficiently link to prior knowledge in their own ways.
Students remember much better what they have both heard and seen or even touched, smelled, or tasted. Listening is a very important teacher
‟s role, someth
ing that we don‟t usually think of in connection with the lecturer‟s role. Listening is crucial for assessment of learning checking comprehension and
appropriate challenge level, for collaboration between teachers and students coaching instead of just judging, and for giving students a real sense of
ownership of classroom activities as well as for allowing students to articulate and internalize the learning processes. Teachers who listen can turn around and
provide very effective support structures to guide students into the next level of challenge. Empowering is really what teaching is all about. From the teacher‟s
role explanation, it can be concluded that the teacher should not only give lectures or explanation on the whole teaching-learning process, but also give a time to the
students to express their knowledge or understanding. The student should participate in classroom activities.
Nunan 1989 states that only one of every forty minutes of class is devoted to student participation. This statement shows that the kind of teaching
that the most of activities take place in the classrooms right now is that the teacher tells and the students listen, then the students tell information on a writen test and
the teacher evaluates. This kind of method of teaching should not be applied any longger because it does not give any change for the students to be independent
learners in mastering or achiving the objectives of learning. More progressive
29 teaching is seen when the teachers model strategies and knowledge making the
context of task completion, and then students attempt to do the task the way teachers did it Wilhelm, 2001.
Moreover, Chaudron 1988 states that there are two kinds of teacher constitution in teaching-learning process, they are: a Teacher-centered: do not
speak unlesss you are spoken to; b Student-centered: if you have something to say, say it.
Those kinds of interaction is negotiable, depends on the rules of speaking established by the teacher. Teacher behaves in different ways and therefore there
are different types of classroom interactions. When teacher talks, commands, restricts
student‟s freedom to talk, it is teacher-centered. When teacher allows students to talk, ask questions, accept their ideas and stimulate their participation
in the class activities, it is student-centered. The other role of the teacher is lectures. A traditional view of the teacher is someone who dispenses knowledge;
someone who lectures, tells, feeds, disseminates, covers material, teaches the subject matter more than the students. The students sit passively while the teacher
is on show. Desks in rows and a blackboard and a podium up front are an arrangement designed for this role of a teacher. However, lecturer are effective for
giving short sets of interaction, background information, guidelines, or other information that is needed in a short time frame e.g. before doing a class project,
lab, or groupp activity.
30
6. Elementary School a. Definition
