Activator – activated As with 'transmitter – receivers' this is a relationship that depends more on the teacher's chosen methodology than on the age of the learners, and can be true for any class.
Counselor-clients This relationship entails a view of the teacher as an accepting, supportive professional, whose function is to supply the expressed needs of the learner rather than to impose a predetermined programme. It involves a perceptible shift of responsibility and initiative in the classroom process from the teacher and the learners themselves. It is a typically adult relationship, and is unlikely to occur in classes of children; even in adult classes it is rare to find it consistently used: perhaps only where the methodology known as Community Language Learning is used. But occasional exchanges and some general 'fee' of the counsellor-client relationship may enrich the interaction in many otherwise conventional adult classes.
Seller-buyers This is an essentially business relationship: the teacher has a commodity – knowledge of the language – which the learner is willing to pay money to acquire. The implication is a relative lowering of the prestige of the teacher, and greater rights of the learner to demand appropriate results (value for money), and even to dismiss the teacher if the results are not forthcoming. This relationship may underlie quite a high proportion of adult learning situations, and the juxtaposition of the traditional authoritative role of the teacher with their role as employee or seller may be an uneasy one.
Resource – users Here the implication is that the teacher is a mere source of knowledge to be tapped by learners, and is virtually passive in classroom interaction: it is the learner who tells the teacher what to do. Total and consistent implementation such a teaching-learning relationship is difficult to envisage, but many adult J classes may implement it partially, particularly where the students are experienced learners who know what they want and how to get it, and/or where the teacher knows the language but has no knowledge or experience of how to teach it.
