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The Role of the Teacher in the 
Learner-Centred Classroom
one of the reasons that pupils are often unsuccessful in real-life 
communication is that the types of interaction they are most used 
to are as follows:
a The teacher lectures a class. The interaction is all to the teach-
er or through the teacher.
b The teacher asks one of the pupils to come to the front of the 
class and either listens to her/him or talks with her/him.
c The teacher listens to or talks with one of the pupils, who re-
mains at her/his desk.
d The teacher asks two pupils to speak to each other (e.g. present 
a dialogue they have learnt by heart).
if pupils are asked to speak to each other they usually take turns 
in speaking rather than communicating naturally. Moreover, the 
teacher is at hand, listening to everything that is being said.
The following illustrations of some types of classroom interac-
tion should help to show that in most cases only one interaction at 
a time takes place in the classroom and that the teacher is usually 
one of the speakers. 
here we see the type of interaction that is appropriate for the 
group-work activities in kids’ english.