The document describes the traditional teacher-centered model of English language instruction in secondary schools, which involves the teacher leading various repetitive steps like checking homework, dictation tests, reading texts, exercises, and grammar lessons with limited student participation and initiative. While this model is time efficient, it is also teacher-centered, allows no student decision-making, and lacks cooperation, which can limit students' development and create a stressful learning environment.

1. Traditional Class Layout.
In the course of teaching English in a class of 18 to 25 secondary school level pupils,
the everyday path is the teacher-centered traditional model of instruction giving and
carrying out.
This comprises of several steps, done more or less unchanging or with a few
alterations, if the time we have in our hands allows it, throughout the school year.
These steps, in 50 minutes of given class time, go as follows:
❖ Checking Homework: The teacher calls for any homework having been given
in previous classes that the pupils had to carry out. The checking can be done
either by students reading out the completed exercises from their books or
photocopies, or coming up to the board and writing those exercises for
everyone to see and check.
❖ Dictation Test: One very common and well acknowledged exercise in Greek
foreign language classes are brief (two or three sentences long) dictation
tests relating to the lesson of the previous class, especially if that was a text to
work on. Dictation, that is recited by the teacher, written down by the students
and handed to the teacher to check, is considered to be a good drill of
listening and writing skills.
❖ Teacher appointing students to read new text: Usually a unit begins with a text
on a popular topic, or in a specialty topic in Vocational Education. The teacher
nominates a student to read out the text for everyone to read, listen and
familiarize themselves with the language and the topic. Often this is followed
by listening to a recording of the text with a native speaker’s recitation, so that
students listen to a standard pronunciation as well. Any unknown words or
obscure meanings are explained and a brief discussion on the topic of the text
may precede (as a warm up), or follow the reading, depending on the
teacher’s decision about it.
❖ Teacher giving out exercises to carry out in class: They might be exercises as
questions on the text, personal opinion questions, vocabulary or listening
exercises. The teacher allows some time for the pupils to come up with the
answers and then the whole class participates in the checking, by having the
teacher nominating several students to read the solutions from their books or
photocopies, or come up and write them on the board.
❖ Grammar: Seldom in the course of the same class, and usually in the
following class, right after the text in almost every unit there is a grammatical
phenomenon, which has been addressed several times in the course of the
text, that calls for explanation. This is something that the teacher does,
analyzing the theory of the particular grammar and then giving out exercises
for the class to carry, each student by themselves, exactly as in the case of
the text questions.
❖ Speaking/Writing: There might be the possibility of several speaking
exercises, based on the topic of the text, enrolling single pupils, pairs or
groups of pupils. Although this calls for a more active participation of the

2. students, as they are given the chance to express their personal opinion on
several matters, it is, nevertheless, still teacher-centered as the teacher is the
“conductor” and the manager of the process, nominating students and
imposing a rhythm and tempo of their choice on the activity.
❖ Homework: The final step is giving out homework usually in the form of
exercises to be done by each student at home, and, much more seldom, in
the form of a group project to be carried out in the course of several classes
and sessions at home, with the help of multimedia and a considerably greater
student participation.
This traditional, everyday method of teaching a foreign language has both
advantages but also several obvious disadvantages.
As for the pros:
1. It is time efficient. Teacher-centered language classes have originally been
designed for this particular purpose, to give the possibility to a person to learn
a foreign language fast and in the greatest possible fluency in the limited
classroom time, for particular, usually professional and other practical
reasons, as opposed to being instructed in the course of a lifetime by the
environment, as is the case in mother-tongue, or in the once upper-class
foreign language instruction by foreign speaking nannies who were also
charged with the upbringing of the child.
And the cons:
1. It is obviously teacher-centered. The teacher is the ruler of the class, no
decision can be made without them authorizing it, they are in charge of the
entire process, both the steps to be taken, the way to be carried-out and the
time needed for each.
2. There is no initiative from the part of the students. Their job is to carry specific
instructions out, the best they can. Apart from limiting their decision making
abilities, which need to be encouraged and reinforced at that age, this has the
additional danger that if for any reason the control is lost by the teacher, there
can me a chaos and commotion created in the classroom that might be
difficult to fix, as no one will know what their role is and how to take charge.
3. Almost no co-operation. While we all know how important interaction is in
adolescence, teacher-centered classes tend to isolate students, and create a
sense of stressful and competitive environment for them to learn in.