Teacher- A Facilitator, or a Tuglaq?

Every language teacher will have faced a situation where he/she felt himself/herself as the Great Tuglaq. Muhammd bin Tuglaq was a great ruler in India who made many revolutionary administrative reforms and most of them turned out to be tragic due to poor implementation. He wanted to make his rule more effective and had an eye for future changes, for example, his decision to change the capital to Delhi. However, his reforms did not bring about the desired effects as he was too haste and didn’t think about practical problems. Language teachers who want to make a difference are often face similar problems. As ELT trainers, most of us wanted our students to speak English fluently within a short period of time. This will create a totally reverse situation than we have ever imagined. This is so because language learning requires a longer period of time different from other disciplines. The situation becomes more difficult when the teaching methodology adopted in institutions does not focus on this aspect and give less importance to language learning. In most of the universities in Kerala, now the duration of teaching English is two semesters; in these two semesters, little or no importance is given to developing English language skills.

Teaching language can be more difficult in most situations as the students may not have the interest to learn the language. When language becomes just one subject, and the focus is given in getting more scores than really mastering the basic concepts, learning process will be the last activity in the classrooms.

ESL activities can be a double-edged weapon in such classrooms. The activities can motivate the students to learn the basic concepts well. Besides, the students will get real-time experience in situational-language learning; whereas this can have an adverse effect if the students are not interested in the activities, or did not understand the basic idea behind the activities, or if the instructor conducts the activities without much planning. In other words, the teachers should not be Tuglaqs.

So, what should be the role of the teacher in the classroom? Should he be a dictator as in the olden times (at least in my student years)? Or a friend who will encourage, motivate the student through friendly gestures? Or should he be both? In one method, teacher is a ‘facilitator’ by which it means “An individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve synergy. He or she is a 'content neutral' party who by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open, and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group's work" – (Doyle, Wikipedia). How far this idea of ‘content neutral’ works in an ESL classroom? Here, being ‘neutral’ doesn’t mean being passive. Like any other place, a classroom also consists of different types of audiences, hostile, critical, uninformed and sympathetic. Here, the facilitator needs to change his teaching strategy according to his audience. In other words, the overall picture is important and also understanding each and every individual in the classroom.