| Although there seem to exist universal general principles of effective teaching, the foreign and second (L2) classroom presents learning objectives, tasks, and environments that are qualitatively distinct from those of other subjects. Relatively few studies have specifically compared and contrasted individual L2 teacher's perceptions of effective teaching behaviors with those of their own students on similar instruments (Beaudrie, Brown, Thompson, 2004; Brosh, 1996, Kern, 1995a). As part of her dissertation, which addressed experienced teachers' perceptions of effective L2 teaching, Reber (2001) suggests that "a similar study that would be valuable to the profession would be one comparing and matching teacher and student belief systems" (p. 173).; The current study explores L2 teachers' and L2 students' perceptions of effective L2 teaching by analyzing matches and mismatches between each group's perception of what they feel an effective L2 teacher should know and be doing in the classroom. The concrete manifestation of these perceptions of effective teaching, in the classroom, is addressed via teaching evaluations. The principal objectives of this study were threefold: first, the identification and comparison of post-secondary L2 students' and L2 teachers' perceptions of effective teaching behaviors on a Likert-scale questionnaire; second, the comparison of students' and teachers' perceptions of how often specific teaching behaviors are performed; third, the comparison of students' evaluations of teaching to their instructors' self-evaluations on a similar questionnaire. A secondary objective of the study was to compare students' responses on selected items from the university's TCE form with their responses on the discipline-specific questionnaires used in this study.; Forty-nine teachers and their 1400 students from 83 intact beginning-level language classes (101-202) across nine distinct languages at the University of Arizona voluntarily participated in the study during Spring semester, 2005. During two visits, participating students and teachers filled out questionnaires regarding perceptions of (1) what effective FL teachers should be doing in the classroom, (2) how often certain target behaviors are performed, and (3) how effective teachers perform them. An additional component of the study involved the comparison of the students' ratings on the language-teaching questionnaire with selected questions relative to teaching taken from the standard TCE form used university wide.; Statistical analyses, both descriptive and inferential, demonstrated that teachers and students, overall and by teacher, do have very different perceptions of what should be done in the FL classroom, what is currently being done, and how effectively it is being done. Questions that demonstrated statistically significant differences between teachers and students overall covered issues such as immediate error correction, task-based teaching, students' use of FL early on, use of pair and small-group work, and grammar teaching. Teachers' and students' responses to the use of English in testing reading and listening skills, the need for the teacher to have native-like command of the target language, the simplification of the FL by the teacher to aid student understanding, and the necessity of situating grammar into real-world contexts were similar. Students and teachers seem to have differing opinions regarding grammar teaching and the usefulness of communicative language teaching strategies with students favoring a more traditional, grammar-based approach and teachers favoring a communicative FL classroom. |
