In this article, the author analyzes data presented by various articles to come to a conclusion whether rapport and specific ways of communication may influence English teaching in a positive way.
Keywords: rapport, communication, English, teaching, education.
It comes as no surprise that education is one of the most crucial aspects of human life. People may go through their whole life learning new things or gaining new skills every step of their way. It is so important even, that education has become a compulsory activity for the society as a whole. While there are certainly outliers this necessary and required field of knowledge exists there specifically for the betterment of humankind and creation of an enlightened members of the public that shall improve and carry “the torch of development”.
This however comes with its own downsides. Since education mainly occurs for the younger demographic, this my come with a variety of challenges that may disrupt or halt the educational process. When talking about English, just like any other language really, the plethora of problems may be connected as to the student’s dislike of the language and ending with the approach that was chosen by the teacher. The present work is focused specifically on the latter aspect of teaching. Via the analysis of several articles made on the subject, we are going to take a look at whether there are any hints that establishing a rapport with the recipients of the educational material. This analysis will be mainly focused on the field of English teaching and teacher talk.
While there is a multitude of various teaching methods not all of them focus on the social interaction between teacher and student. In the work presented by A. Halim it is stated that the introduction and integration of various rapport types by a teacher into their educational process has had a positive effect on the students and their motivation to learn English. The results of this article are based on the results of the experiment conducted specially for the research in which among a plethora of rapport variants we can note that the teacher was giving special focus to being positive and humorous while also showing respect to and interest in students. The research also included commentary made by the students all of whom have marked the approach chosen by the teacher as being supportive and healthy for their motivation and willingness to study further [1].
Further research conducted by Sa Li in their article has also shown similar results when viewing the relationships between EFL teachers and their students. Li has come to believe and states in their article that close and friendly relationship in education process has actual positive influence not only on the teaching process itself but the mental health of the participants as well. While the article closely scrutinizes the emotional component Li referrers many various research articles that either give no attention to it or disregard it entirely while also highlighting its importance themselves. Factually disregarding the emotional aspect of teaching can have serious ramifications in the experience of students as can be seen in the nowadays trends. One of the more jarring problems right now is the persistent lack of motivation of students to study subjects. While this is an occurrence that requires research on case-to-case basis the general assumption can be made that with the right approach such lack of need or want to study may if not outright fixed but at least mended [2].
More similar data on the subject has been provided by Lili Song and her partners. According to their research establishing rapport is especially important for students for whom English is a second language. They say that building close bonds does in fact have positive effect on the learning process for the recipients of a program. However, the only hinderance for this piece of academic research is the fact that it was conducted for Chinese EFL students [3].
What is important here is for us to understand that while the presented in the above-mentioned study limitation is an issue due to which science will require more case-to-case data, the general principle of rapport usefulness remains the same.
This is supported by another experiment conducted among the Mexican students by Josephina del Carmen Santana which was described in their article, showing similar tendencies and logical conclusion [4]. What is interesting in this research is that not only does it show that rapport is important for the teaching process but also highlights the glaring misconception one may have about rapport and teaching in general. In their study they highlight the rapport effectiveness by comparing the same materials and teaching programs on the testing group but providing them in in Spanish for one group and in English for the other. In a surprising turn of events even when compared to the native language teaching students showed better retention with the English spoken program. The author of the article believe that this can be an example of variance one may get from establishing various types of rapport and implies that the trouble of acquiring knowledge in foreign languages may lie not in the complexity of the subject per se and more so in the various levels of communication used during the teaching process.
Indeed, in this article del Carmen Santana does show multiple differences in approach to teaching that do as it turns out shape the rapport that is established during the class. It is important for the present work to highlight a generalized group of them:
– Approachability;
– Effectiveness;
– Encouragement;
– Respectfulness;
– Humility;
– Humorousness;
– Authenticity.
These aspects of rapport are essential due to the fact that they help connect with students much more closely that first anticipated.
When a person engages in teaching sometimes it is very easy to forget that one is educating actual people and not filling out a sheet. Considering that the population grows and a teaching establishment may not have ample human resources fulfil the required number of designated teachers, it may forgo the methodologically advised group sizes that increases strain on teachers and as such may result in lack of communication or rapport in general between the students and teachers. This is, unfortunately only of many possible challenges that present themselves to a teacher. Be it a professional incompetence, personal or interpersonal troubles, lack of information or unwillingness to communicate in the first place, some teachers just cannot establish a necessary level of rapport to have a satisfactory type of communication. This is further supported by what the above-mentioned group of rapport-related aspects of communication represent. Being authentic with students just like showing humility may be somewhat challenging for some people. It is true that due to the age difference at times or most of the times even it is hard to establish proper rapport with students and it is something that is beyond personal relationships, as culture, language and worldview evolve ever further with each and every generation and at times it may be just impossible to understand one another. This is however just one those hurdles a teacher must get over to get better. The same goes for the rest of the aspects mentioned. Another very hard to get through aspect is respect. Once again this may be closely connected to the age gap presented between teachers and students, but it does not describe it as a whole. One should always be approachable and light-hearted when interacting with students as teachers should remember that they are not just keepers of knowledge but are the very people who mold and shape the younger generations.
To sum up, this work has analyzed various works which present the idea that rapport is quite important to if not one of the key components of the teaching process. This is due to the fact that respecting and effectively communicating with students results in positive development of a subject. All of the presented works focused mainly on English as a foreign language subject, however the general principles shown in these works is applicable to the general approach to teaching and in theory are applicable many other various subjects that at the very least focus on communication. Hopefully this work will show the general relevance of researching the question of rapport necessity in teaching and spur further conversation on this subject
References:
- Halim A. The integration of rapport in English language teaching //Langkawi: Journal of The Association for Arabic and English. — 2015. — Т. 1. — №. 1. — С. 69–84.
- Li S. On the role of teacher-student rapport on English as a foreign language students’ well-being //Frontiers in Psychology. — 2022. — Т. 12. — С. 822013.
- Song L., Luo R., Zhan Q. Toward the role of teacher caring and teacher-student rapport in predicting English as a foreign language learners’ willingness to communicate in second language //Frontiers in Psychology. — 2022. — Т. 13. — С. 874522.
- del Carmen Santana J. Establishing teacher-student rapport in an English-medium instruction class //Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning. — 2019. — Т. 12. — №. 2.
- Nguyen H. T. Rapport building in language instruction: A microanalysis of the multiple resources in teacher talk //Language and Education. — 2007. — Т. 21. — №. 4. — С. 284–303.
