Compare and contrast between two teachers – teaching English in different contexts (a personal research paper)

In this paper, the roles and classroom activities of two teachers from different contexts will be analyzed. One teacher I have chosen from the primary level and another teacher I have selected from the secondary level. The interviews I have conducted with them were phone-based. I asked them around 15-19 questions and recorded them for my research. To collect enough data from researching the following topic, I asked them about their classroom, teaching patterns, students, and class management. The teacher from the primary level is very much different from the secondary level teacher, though they are both teaching English in their classroom. Their teaching patterns depend on the context.

Furthermore, Bangladeshi students are usually less interested in English and are not very balanced in English. Hence, teachers generally experience a different type of barrier while teaching in their classroom. In the latter part of my assignment, I will describe them elaborately.

Teaching at the primary level is not very easy. The primary level teacher that I talked to was very calm and quiet. While talking, I noticed that she is very much less talkative and organized about what she is answering. At first, I asked her about how she used to teach in her class and how she understood whether her students were learning or not. She has given that they teach very basic English with her students, like looking, listening, seeing, coming here, etc. The students’ eye contact ensures that they have understood the lesson. When they cannot understand anything, she usually teaches them by using another example from their familiar environment. As we know, a classroom is full of different varieties of students. Nothing different here. In her classroom, some of the students are conformists. They do not want to participate in class. In this situation, she is supposed to notice who is not experiencing and then tell them to come here, teach them the word meaning first, and then ask them to read the whole sentence. One good thing I have noticed is that she knows almost all of her students’ names, which is helping her to develop communication and relationships with them.

The scenario of the secondary-level classroom is far different from that of the primary-level classroom. Secondary school teachers are very time-conscious and primarily concerned with homework. I was taking her interview. I found her very talkative and fluent in her taking. In her classroom, she mainly teaches English first papers to her students. She teaches them translated comprehension and asks them to read out sometimes. She also focuses on the book’s exercises, like filling in the blanks or open-ended questions. She calls out their names and inquires about the difficulty they are experiencing while reading. Most of the students in her class are concrete learners. But time management is a big issue for her. If she has the time, she will occasionally assign group projects. Sometimes, she takes an English second paper class and faces problems teaching them grammatical rules. She is not the only performer in her class; her students also participate in a reading session. Her style is vast, so she cannot focus properly on their students’ activists. Moreover, she does not know all their names. She uses both Bangla and English according to her needs in her class.

If I compare and contrast these two types of teachers and their teaching styles, we will find some similarities and dissimilarities. First of all, I will focus on similarities. The first thing I have noticed is that, in both contexts, teachers try to keep a friendly relationship with students because, according to them, this helps them teach their students better. The second thing I have noticed is that they both concentrate on students who are less interested in-class participation. Moreover, both use different examples from other sources to teach their students properly. Lastly, they are bilingual teachers; they use both Bangla and English together in their classrooms. Now, if I focus on the dissimilarities, first of all, I would say that as a teacher from a different context, they are both diverse as people. Their teaching strategies are different, and their ways of teaching are different from one another.
On the other hand, primary level teachers focus on eye contact. On the other hand, secondary-level teachers ask them questions directly, so there is a big difference between them. Their classroom sizes are different, and the methods of their teaching English also do not match each other. So overall, there are enough similarities and dissimilarities.

Though most of our country is not aware of different teaching approaches and methodologies, they intentionally or unintentionally use these approaches and methods in their classroom. And in the same way, the teacher I have chosen also does not know precisely about these methodologies, but they are using them. The teacher I have selected from the primary level uses CLT and TPR in her classroom. Because she gives them group work, teaches them word meaning and grammar, which is not their main priority, besides she gives them commands like “sit down,” “come here,” “stand up,” etc. On the other hand, the secondary level teacher also follows CLT. Still, she mainly concentrates on GTM and the Audio-lingual method because she talks about grammatical rules and mistakes in her interview at this level. So here, grammatical rules are essential to learning.
Moreover, she translates comprehension passages and asks her students to repeat them accurately. So, by applying these methods, they keep their students interested in learning. In primary level attention, grabbing attention is more critical than at the secondary level. Because young learners need individual attention, but adolescents do not need much attention because they come to this level with lots of experience.

To conclude, I can say every class has different learners, so teachers have to change their attitude according to students’ behavior, and this is not easy for every teacher. This is much more challenging for a primary-level teacher than for a secondary-level teacher. So, in this case, both of the teachers lost their motivation level when they failed to teach something to their students. Still, it is OK to feel frustrated sometimes because English is very new for students and teachers in our country, so they face more difficulties during teaching. They could do better, but short class time and a teacher’s English knowledge are two huge Barbara barriers to the English teaching field. Their proficiency level is not as high as it needs to be. So if they make some improvement in their own English, then the outcome could be much better. They should know about learners and different methods of teaching English before they start their profession as a teacher.