Thus, an outsider volunteer is not quite an ideal co-teacher. On the other hand, if the teacher's assistant is among the students, classes will progress normally and smoothly because:
1st, Local co-teachers are among your students on whom you have got some sort of authority.
2nd, You rarely worry about their absence from classes as they are good and hardworking students and that school is the sole interest for them.
3rd, Their position in the classroom as the teacher's right-hand will surely encourage other students to work harder to get some of that privilege.
4th, The teacher can rely on them to manage, monitor, and assist their classmates with understanding and interpreting an exercise, activity, or any task in group work.
5th, The student co-teacher is the intermediate between the teacher and under-confident students. They can understand each other better.
6th, Good students, working as co-teachers, can paraphrase the teacher's assignments, to the slow assimilating students, in the language and the manner students understand best.
7th, The student co-teacher supervision is more tolerated than the teacher's. The members of the groups work relaxingly in the presence of one of their alike but not in the presence of the teacher who is supposed to check for errors and mistakes only.
Finally, these co-teachers do the tasks so excitingly and perfectly that the teacher may just guide the students, provides them with the instructions clearly of what she wants to be accomplished and keeps aloof.
From hitherto stated advantages, I think excellent students in each group or class or school level can do the job better than a volunteer co-teacher who will always be a stranger for the students. In other words, volunteers are not committed; they have their own preoccupations themselves so you can not rely on their presence whenever you need them. Consequently you have to look for volunteers every time. This diversity and change in volunteers will surely have some impact on your work and on the students as well. It could be a positive impact but also it could have adverse effects. In adult classes this will have no or less effect contrary to younger students. The intimacy of the classroom counts too much for them. I mean that the classroom is their own domain where only the teacher (the mother/father-figure) and the other students (friends) are allowed.
Apart from this, we should not deny the most considerable help the outsider volunteer could afford in specific projects. Take for example a simulation of a situation where students are supposed to ask for or to sit for an interview to fill in a visa form or any other situation where authentic natural language is required. Local co-teachers cannot be of great help in such real-to-life situations because the others won't take their interviewing for serious. On the opposite of that an outsider volunteer can control this side of sincerity of the task and ask students normal questions about their names, ages, addresses, and so on and so forth. In this case the students' answers will be as well more authentic themselves because they are not answering the teacher's questions for accuracy or fluency check; but for the information of its sake. With an outsider volunteer students are more attentive because they get aware of the fact that they may face a similar challenging situation one day where English is not used for learning purposes but for real life needs.
