| In the recent years, many researches both at home and abroad showed that learning environment is correlated significantly with students learning outcome.Learning environments research has shown that the interpersonal relationships between teacher and students are an important element contributing to the learning process of students(Wubbels & Brekelmans, 2005: 6-24). The investigation of the student–teacher relationships within the school classroom has been longstanding and has followed many different paradigms and methodologies. The present study adapt a questionnaire to assesses students' perceptions of teachers' interpersonal behaviour-The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction(QTI), studies in several countries have proven it has satisfactory reliability and validity(Brekelmans et al., 1990; Fisher et al.,1992; Wubbels & Levy, 1991). Each QTI scale in the present study had satisfactory internal consistency, with all scales having a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.852 for actual English teacher, 0.759 for ideal English teacher.This thesis investigated students' perceptions of their EFL teachers' interpersonal behavior, and explored differences between male students' perception and female students' perception of their EFL teachers' interpersonal behavior, whether there are differences between their perception of actual and ideal teacher interpersonal behaviour, and found out the correlation between interpersonal teacher behaviour and students' English achievement. The subjects were 212 senior two students and three teachers from three classes in a normal senior middle school in Jiangxi. The present study adopted both quantitative and qualitative approach- the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction(QTI) and interviews with teachers and students to investigate teachers' interpersonal behaviour. After some necessary processing with the original data, Descriptive, Independent Samples Test, Paired Samples Test and Correlation analysis were run with the statistical software SPSS19.0. The results were analyzed and reported in terms of eight scales of the QTI and two independent dimensions called(Cooperation–Opposition, CO) and Influence(Dominance–Submission, DS).Through an analysis of data, the study revealed that among all the eight dimension of the students' perceptions of their EFL teachers' interpersonal behaviour,Helpful/ Friendly had the highest score, followed by Understanding, Leadership,Student Freedom and Strict, while teacher displayed Uncertain, Dissatisfied and Admonishing behaviour less. Teachers generally demonstrated much more cooperative behaviour than dominant behaviour. Results also showed that females perceive greater Leadership and Understanding behaviors in their teachers while males perceive their teachers as being more Uncertain, Dissatisfied and Admonishing.What's more, results indicated a discrepancy between students' perceptions of preferred and actual teacher interpersonal behaviour. Except for strict, other teacher interpersonal behaviours for seven sectors as well as Influence and Proximity are statistically significant. Students agreed that the ideal English teacher should be a strong leader, more understanding, more helpful and friendly, and give more responsibility and freedom to the students, and the ideal teacher should be less uncertain, less admonishing and less dissatisfied. Besides, students prefer their teachers demonstrate both more dominant and cooperative behaviours, and they yearn for greater more Proximity than Influence. For student cognitive outcomes, findings showed that the Leadership, Helpful/Friendly and Understanding are positively related to students' English achievements, while Dissatisfied and Admonishing are negative significant at the 0.01 level. Only Proximity is positively related to students' English achievements.Based on the findings, the author proposes some implications for English teaching in senior middle schools, points out the limitations of this present study and makes some suggestions for the further research. |
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