A Study On Characteristics Of Effective English Teacher As Perceived By English Teachers And Students

This paper reports on a study that investigated characteristics of an effective English language teacher as perceived by English teachers and students. The primary aim of the study was to reveal whether there was any difference between English teachers’ and students’, and between the high achieving students’ and the low achieving students’ conceptions in Chinese context.To achieve the purpose of the study,25 English language teachers and 122 students from Yun Dong High School, Shanxi Province were selected as a convenience sample. Data were collected using a questionnaire and an interview.The results of the questionnaire indicated that the teachers’ conceptions of effective English language teacher differed significantly from those of the learners between categories (English proficiency, pedagogical knowledge, socio-affective skills) in that teachers perceived pedagogical knowledge as the most important characteristic to be an effective English language teacher, whereas the students perceived socio-affective skills as the most important characteristic. The endorsement order reported by the high achieving students was the same as the order reported by the total students. Although the low achieving students ranked pedagogical knowledge the first, no significant differences between the high achieving students’ and the low achieving students’ conceptions were demonstrated between the three categories.As for the differences within categories, the teachers ranked pronunciation proficiency, preparing the lesson well, and arousing students’ motivation to learn English the first respectively, whereas the students assigned the highest weight on vocabulary proficiency, providing activities that arouse student’s interest in learning English, and helping build students’ self-confidence in learning English well respectively. Moreover, the teachers perceived significant different characteristics from the students, with the teachers considering characteristics like pronunciation proficiency, teaching English tailored to students’ proficiency level, and arousing students motivation to learn English more important than the students did and the students considering characteristics like teaching how to learn English outside the classroom, using various teaching materials including video, audio, and multimedia, providing opportunities to use English through meaningful activities, alleviating students’ anxiety in English class and having a sense of humor more important than the teachers did. As for between the high achieving students and the low achieving students, the largest differences were found in teaching English in English in favor of the high achieving students and in reading proficiency in favor of low achieving students.The results of interviews indicated that the students emphasized more on the importance of personality traits of an English language teacher such as being patient, optimistic, and outgoing in English language teaching effectiveness, whereas the teachers gave different answers with focusing more on discipline and being a moral guide. The other difference between the views of the teachers and the learners was that the teachers only concentrated on the positive characteristics of an effective English language teacher, whereas the students not only considered these positive qualities, they also focused on the characteristics that may affect a teacher’s teaching effectiveness adversely. Although both the high achieving students and the low achieving students considered helping students do well in examinations as one of the important characteristics of an effective English language teacher, however, the high achieving students focused more on the teachers’ ability to have a good knowledge of English language points, especially what the College Entrance Examination will test, whereas the low achieving students focused more on the teachers’ ability to teach them some learning strategies and techniques to do an examination question right.Apart from these differences, it can be concluded from the results of questionnaire and interviews that there were universal characteristics of effective English language teacher such as speaking proficiency, preparing the lesson well, helping build students’ self-confidence in learning English well, caring about students’ personal problems, respecting the personality of the students and helping students do well in examinations which were considered important by all the teachers and the students.These findings have far-reaching implications which are of vital importance for knowledge-based teacher education as well as English teachers and learners in China.