obliged to look carefully at their professional development in order to improve their experiences in classrooms and to minimize burnout. The vast
majorities of teachers is self-directed and want to understand the complexity of their task and that of their students. As educators of others, teachers
intrinsically want and need to participate in ongoing development and change in their own professional lives. Teachers need to be supported in
their efforts. Too many good teachers have become worn down and ineffective as a result of unimproved, traditional teaching assignments that
characterized earlier ELT England, 1998: 2.
4. The Role of Teachers in the Teaching and Learning Activity
A role can be defined as the part taken by a participant in any act of communication Ellis and McClintock in Richards and Lockhard, 1996: 97.
According to Richards and Lockhard, the role of teachers is primarily an occupational role, encoded by the nature of school and of teaching. The teachers
interpret their roles in different ways depending of the kinds of school in which they work, the teaching method they employ, their personalities, and their
backgrounds.
Richards 1985: 23 points out that typically, methods turn most critically on teacher roles and their realization. For example, in the classical audio-lingual
method the teacher is regarded as the source of the source of language learning. For a functionalcommunicative method, the roles of teacher have been described
in the following terms:
The teacher has two main roles: the first role is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and
between these participants and the various activities and texts. The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching
group. The latter role is closely related to the objective of the first role and
arises from it. These roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher; first, as an organizer or resources and as resource himself, second as a guide
within the classroom procedures and activities. … A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of
appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning, and organizational capacities. Breen and Candlin in
Richards, 1985: 24
The communicative language teaching CLT according to Richards 2007: 5 involves new roles of the teachers and the students in the classroom. The
teachers have to assume the role of facilitator and monitor rather than being a model for correct speech and writing. The teacher had to develop to develop a
different view of learners’ errors and of herhis own role in facilitating language
learning.
The use of GBA aimed to develop students’ ability to construct texts, and to prepare the students to communicate and take part in the society using the target
language. To communicate in the target language, students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings, and functions Freeman, 2000: 128.
5. The Communicative Competence Required by the Teachers.
