Teacher Voice, Student Voice: Switching Identities
By: Harumi Kimura
All teachers are performers. In this short article, I’d like to share my experience of observing one English class at an elementary school, where the instructor sometimes put on a teacher hat and at other times wore a learner hat, switching her identities at will, in one class meeting. This experience has drastically changed my perspective of “good” teaching approaches in elementary English classes in Japan.
I’ve been interested in how second language (L2) speakers try to present themselves as users of that language. Self-presentation theory (Leary, 1995) states that we are social creatures and thus we are concerned about our public images both unconsciously and purposefully, and constantly monitor how others perceive us. Well, L2 users are usually less competent than they are in their first language, both linguistically and socially, so they struggle expressing themselves in a new language and more often than not feel uneasy and helpless (and even miserable!). It is no wonder that second language anxiety has been studied since the early days of the field of second language acquisition (e.g., Scovel, 1978).
Let me confess that I myself have been an anxious learner. In my first English class in high school, I experienced, for the first time, a native-speaking teacher actually talking to her students. Believe me, it was the very first time ever! It was not a tape recording as was common for me. I did not know what to do. My body stiffened. My mind stopped working. Now I can explain what was happening. My brain must have been so busy processing the new experience, a fearful experience, that it was not able to pay attention to and process the aural message for understanding and memory. Emotion overrides cognition (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).
In the current elementary education system in Japan, third-grade and fourth-grade students only have one English class a week, named “foreign language activities,” and fifth-grade and sixth-grade students have English classes twice a week. They are supposed to develop basic English language skills that serve as the foundation for communication. Well, this is what the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology planned, and they started the new curriculum in 2020. Teachers and schools were not well prepared for the change, although it was implemented after a two-year transition period. Of course, I should say that some teachers and schools are more successful than others, but I have an impression that quite a few teachers and schools are still more or less struggling.
The class I’m going to write about happened to be run by three teachers: a specialized English teacher, an assistant language teacher (ALT, a native or near-native English speaker), and the homeroom teacher. Let me add that this arrangement is quite unusual. As I observed the class, the homeroom teacher joined the English class sometimes as a student/learner and at other times as part of the teaching team. For example, when students repeated what the teacher or the ALT said, she joined the students in the loudest voice of all in a so-called choral reading. I mean the loudest! No contest! But in some other cases, she gave instructions as a teacher, such as “You know, I heard boys are not as “genki” (in high spirits) as girls. So, okay, now boys only. Say again what you have just said.”
She also joined classroom activities as a student, such as solving a crossword puzzle and playing a pointing game (the teacher says something and students point to the picture of it in their textbook). While she was working on the pointing game, for example, she was thinking aloud, saying“What did you say?” and “Oh, it’s very difficult!” sometimes in Japanese and at other times in English. Students, as well as the main teacher and ALT, seemed to be enjoying her reaction, or actually, over-reaction. While she was “learning” with other students, she was also helping weaker students work on the activity. When she spotted some students being distracted, she tried to get them back on task.
I’m not sure how much she was intentionally juggling her two identities, as a learner and a teacher. It looked like she was doing it naturally, without thinking too much about the role she would play at each moment.
Let us now get back to the above-mentioned self-presentation theory. The theory explains not just how and how much each of us monitors our identities, but how we try to manage them and even influence how others perceive us. It presupposes our intentional (and unintentional) strategic use of both verbal and non-verbal signals to create a desired impression on others on the spot. Essentially, we are “actors” on social stages, constantly adjusting our behavior to fit each situation and the specific audience (Goffman, 1959).
Don’t you think that you yourself are sometimes trying to look, for example, high-spirited, energized, and/or lively when you are actually not so? Sometimes, teachers are compared to actors (Liraz & Eyal, 2023), who strategically manage the impressions they make on students. We, at least occasionally, take on some roles to play on stage.
In that homeroom teacher’s case, I don’t know how much she intentionally took on the two different roles in the classroom discourse, i.e., teacher and student, but I can tell for sure she was, or played the part of, a good language learner. She was eager to learn the language. She was not afraid of making mistakes. She said she was having trouble when she actually was. She might have intentionally played the part of what she hoped her students would be. Or maybe that’s what she naturally is and she would be the same teaching any subject. Who knows? And it doesn’t matter.
My conclusion is that non-native teachers of English teaching elementary students do not necessarily have to be proficient users of the language. If the teacher is intimidated to speak in English, their students will also feel intimidated and even fearful. If they are not enjoying expressing themselves in English, their students definitely won’t be enjoying, well, anything that happens in the classroom. Whether that’s because of our mirror neurons or not, we do not need hard science to understand the influence. Especially in elementary foreign language classrooms, I have come to believe that teachers should be role models of good language learners (Griffiths, 2008), meaning they should demonstrate good learning behaviors in class.
I do believe that the homeroom teacher demonstrated quite productive learning behaviors. For example, she was fully engaged in classroom activities. Also, she was evaluating both the task and her understanding when she said, “Oh, it’s very difficult!” Metacognitive strategies such as monitoring and evaluating understanding belong to one of the six groups of language learning strategies Oxford (1990) proposed. Her self-talk, in public in this case, “What did you say?” can easily be converted into a request in two-way listening, “Would you say that again?” or “Excuse me?” This is what strategic listeners do in active listening (Goh & Vandergrift, 2022). Her students would have thought that it is okay to ask when they don’t understand. Acquiring strategic knowledge is as important as obtaining content knowledge. The teacher was indeed a role model of a good language learner.
Well, come to think of it, the same goes with teachers teaching all levels of learners. I’m happy to play the part of a good (language) learner in classrooms since, honestly, I’d like to be one.
References
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Random House.
Goh, C. M., & Vandergrift, L. (2022). Teaching and learning second language listening: Metacognition in action (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Griffiths, C. (2008). Lessons from good language learners. Cambridge University Press.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1(1), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2007.00004.x
Leary, M. R. (1995). Self-presentation: Impression management and interpersonal behavior. Westview Press.
Liraz, R., & Eyal, O. (2023). Undermined professionalism: Strategic impression management among early childhood educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 127, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104089
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Heinle & Heinle.
Scovel, T. (1978). The effect of affect on foreign language learning: A review of the anxiety research. Language Learning, 28(1), 129–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1978.tb00309.x
Harumi Kimura is a professor at Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University. She studied L2 listening anxiety in her doctoral study, and her academic interests include second language acquisition, learner development, learner psychology, multilingualism, and cooperative learning. She thinks that her mission is “to make learning another language less intimidating and a bit more rewarding plus fun.”