Indicators of the Practice of Power in Language Classrooms

This paper attempts to reveal some strategies performed by a teacher which indicate that s/he is exercising power in managing and conducting language teaching and learning process. Such power may be manifested in terms of the frequency of directives or of the holding of control over the interaction process. Despite the fact that exercising power seems to impair justice, democracy, and humanity because it implies inequality, in a pedagogical context, especially in a language teaching and learning process, such a practice may still be beneficial and justifiable. How the teacher exercises power in a foreign language teaching process and what benefits the exercise of such power has will be enumerated by the end of this paper.