Creative Education
2013. Vol.4, No.2, 117-123
Published Online February 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ce) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ce.2013.42017
Affective Characteristics and Teaching Skills of English Language
Teachers: Comparing Perceptions of Elementary, Secondary and
High School Students
Ebru Melek Koç
Academic Writing Centre, Izmir Institute of Technology, Izmir, Turkey
Received August 9th, 2012; revised September 10th, 2012; accepted September 26th, 2012
The present study aims to investigate the elementary, secondary and high school students’ perceptions on
a good language teacher. The participants are 365 Turkish school students who are learning English as a
foreign language. The present study has revealed that most of the student groups generally differ in terms
of issues related to teaching skills when compared with the issues related to the affective skills. In the
present study it has been also found that what students expect from a good English teacher is to have the
ability to maintain discipline, motivate students, learn about the learner’ needs and establish good rela-
tions with them. The study also reveals striking results with respect to classroom discipline and teacher
subject knowledge.
Keywords: Good Teacher; English Language Teacher; Affective Characteristics; Teaching Skills
Introduction
The teacher education system aims to train qualified and ef-
fective teachers. Since “effective teacher” and “good teacher”
are overlapping concepts, in the present study these two con-
structs will refer to each other. Miller (1987) states four major
issues related to the concept of “being an effective teacher”: 1)
affective characteristics; 2) teaching skills; 3) academic knowl-
edge; and 4) classroom management. Affective characteristics
refer to issues such as establishing positive relations with the
students and showing interest in learners. Teaching skills con-
sists of teacher’s knowledge about the subject, pupils, curricu-
lum and also effective use of the teaching methods and materi-
als. Academic Knowledge addresses teachers’ subject knowl-
edge and the ability to teach their subject to their students.
Kounin (1970) defines “effective teachers” as those who “ac-
curately handle inappropriate student behaviour, manage com-
peting or developing events, more smoothly through instruction,
maintain appropriate pacing, and maintain a group focus”. Ac-
cording to Kounin (ibid) the abilities accepted from an effective
teacher are the ability to handle student misbehaviour appropri-
ately, to create and manage a stimulating competitive environ-
ment, to give clear instruction to pace and maintain a focused
group work. He also points out that the most specific feature of
an effective teacher is to keep students focused on learning and
to reduce classroom disruption.
An effective teacher should also motivate the learners. In
Walter (2000) it is indicated that giving students more control
over the learning process increases motivation. Similarly, Dic-
kinson (1987) comments as follows: “If the learner is prevented
from using the favoured techniques, this is likely to seem to
her to reduce her learning effectiveness and so be demotivat-
ing”.
Stricland (1998) rather than defining “the characteristics of
an effective teacher”, has described “bad teachers” and referred
to them as teachers who lack field knowledge and good class-
room control, who cannot discover the learning problems of
learners, who have obsessions on teaching and do not have
certain goals. In addition, not caring about the students and not
interacting with them is another feature of a bad teacher. Bad
teachers do not have presentational skills, in other words, they
teach too fast or too slow; they are too authoritative or lack
discipline.
Thomas and Montomery (1998) investigated grades 2, 3, 4, 5,
and grade students’ views on the quality of teaching. They did
interviews, and used personal journals and reflective notes as
data collection instruments. They have stated four dimensions
of good teaching: caring; understanding, fun and loving. What
is interesting about these results is that all these dimensions
relate to the affective characteristics.
Taylor (1962) analysed 1379 essays by primary and secon-
dary school pupils on “a good teacher” and “a poor teacher”
and constructed a checklist which was filled by 867 children.
The results revealed that students’ “good teacher” concept re-
lated with mostly to teaching skills (40%) and personal quali-
ties (25%).
Vollmer and Creek (1988) used SPI (Student Perception In-
strument) which evaluated teacher effectiveness in two dimen-
sions: competencies in classroom behaviour and interpersonal
skills. These two concepts seem to correspond with the con-
cepts “teaching skills” and “affective characteristic”.
Wragg and Wood (1984) constructed a study with high
school children whose age ranged from 12 to 16 and who are at
different grades. The results showed significant difference in
terms of grade level. Most of the students (75%) preferred
teachers who were good listeners, explained things clearly in
the class and helped them learn a lot.
If teachers are aware of what the students expect from them
the teachers will be more successful in meeting the students’

E. M. KOÇ
needs, thus effective teaching will be achieved. As a measure-
ment tool “students’ voice” was claimed to be valuable in pro-
viding insights to “what a good teacher is”. Students’ percep-
tions on “the characteristics of a good teacher” have been a
neglected area. Taking this fact into consideration, the present
study aims to fill this gap. Students’ voices may provide a
deeper insight into the concept of the features of a good lan-
guage teacher, by the help the present study, teachers will be
provided with the thoughts of their pupils about what their stu-
dents expect from them as teachers. The results of the study
will help the English language teachers in meeting the expecta-
tions of the students, which is likely to lead to a more effective
language teaching. The present study aims to investigate the
research questions below:
1) What are the elementary, secondary and high school stu-
dents’ perceptions on “a good English language teacher”?
2) Are there any differences among the perceptions of the
elementary, secondary and high school students in terms of
their perception of “a good English language teacher”?
Methodology
Participants
The participants of the present study are 365 Turkish school
students who are learning English as a foreign language and
categorised into three groups (Table 1). The first group is ele-
mentary school students who are at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th
grades and whose ages differ from 7 to 11. The second group
consists of secondary school students who are at the 7th and 8th
grades and whose ages differ from 12 to 14. And the last group
of the students is the high school students at the 10th and 11th
grades. The age of high school students range from 16 to17.
Data Collection Instrument
The data was elicited by means of a questionnaire con-
structed by the researcher. In order to achieve the content valid-
ity, the questionnaire items were analysed by two field experts
from the department of English Language Teaching. Taking the
comments of these two experts into consideration some of the
items were revised, modified or omitted. Moreover, to enrich
the validity of the questionnaire and to achieve face validity, a
pilot study was constructed. The purpose of the pilot study was
to find out the ambiguities if there were any. Five students from
each group of students participated in the pilot study. In the
pilot study some of the elementary students indicated that they
had difficulty in understanding the 5-point agreement scale.
Thus, the 5-point agreement scale was modified and changed
into a 5-point “degree of importance” scale. In the question-
naire a 5-point degree scale was used to analyse the perceptions
of the learners. In all the items 1 was assigned “not important”,
Table 1.
Categorisation of the participants in terms of number/gender and level
of school.
Female Male Total
Group I: Elementary 46 54 100
Group II: Secondary 60 60 120
Group III: High 82 63 145
Total 188 177 365
2 “has little importance”, 3 “undecided”, 4 “important” and 5
“very important”.
The questionnaire has 24 items. Items 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,
13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 23 include statements which refer
to a teacher’s teaching ability, classroom management skills
and subject knowledge teaching. Therefore, the sub-category
covering these items is named as “Teaching Skills”. On the
other hand items 2, 3, 4, 6, 14, 21, 22 and 24 are associated
with a teacher’s personal characteristics and the sub-category
covering these items is named “affective characteristics”. The
questionnaire is designed in a 5-point agreement degree scale
was in which items were assigned from “not important (1)” to
“very important (5)”.
Data Collection Procedures
Before data collection, permission is taken from the school
ministers to collect data in their schools and participants are
provided a participant consent form in which it is indicated that
their participation is voluntary and data provided by them is
confidential, they can withdraw their data anytime, by which
the author has fulfilled the technical requirements necessary to
demonstrate the use of ethical procedures in researching human
participants.
The questionnaires were administered to the elementary,
secondary and high school students at 6 state schools by the
researcher. A second visit was done to these schools in order to
collect the questionnaires back. The total data collection pro-
cedure lasted for four weeks.
Data Analysis
The frequencies and mean scores of each item in the ques-
tionnaire were calculated to find out the perceptions of the three
groups of students. The statistical test of analysis of variance
(ANOVA) compares several group means simultaneously. If
one independent variable is included, the ANOVA is one-way
ANOVA; if two independent variables are included in an
ANOVA, the analysis is called two-way ANOVA (Hatch &
Farhady, 1982; Smith & Glass, 1987; Wiersma, 1995). In the
present study one-way ANOVA is used since there is only one
independent variable (school level). In addition to ANOVA a
post-hoc test of LSD test (Least significant Difference) is used
to determine which student groups have significant difference
with regard to the each questionnaire item.
Results
The results of each research question and the related discus-
sion will be provided in a unified form.
Research question: What are the elementary, secondary and
high school students’ perceptions on “a good language tea-
cher”?
The results will be presented under two main categories: 1)
Teaching Skills and 2) Affective Characteristics. The results of
the mean scores, standard deviation and p value for each item
are presented in Table 1. According to the students’ overall
mean scores for all items (Table 2), characteristics of a good
English language teacher which received the ten highest mean
scores, the students think that a good English language teachers
is someone who:
 does not discriminate among the students;
 is patient;
118

E. M. KOÇ
 is good at pronunciation;
 takes the attention of the students in the classroom;
 teaches well;
 has good affairs with the students;
 creates and entertaining learning atmosphere;
 is kind to his/her students;
 asks the views of the his/her students when organising the
classroom activities;
 has the ability to participate his/her students in the lesson.
According to the students’ ratings the most important quality
of a good English language teacher is that he/she should not
discriminate among the students and be patient, which is related
to affective characteristics. Blishen (1996) found that according
to the pupils the most important quality of a good teacher is
personality. He found that understanding and patience, the abil-
ity to pay attention to the pupil, the ability to develop good
relations with the parents, and politeness were the qualities of a
desired teacher. Similarly Friedman and Korngold (1993) found
that a good teacher was described as a teacher who develops
good interpersonal relations. Although the first two characteris-
tics which received the highest score from the three students
groups belong to the sub-category “affective characteristics”,
the characteristics of a good teacher stated above equally rep-
resent the features of both “teaching skills” and “affective char-
acteristics”. This shows that according to the students’ features
belonging both the “teaching skills” and “affective characteris-
tics” are discriminating factors for being a good teacher.
The lowest overall mean scores of the students were calcu-
lated (Table 2). For the items 2, 7, and 12. The mean overall
mean scores of the students for these items are relatively 3.79,
3.43, and 3.17. Although the results does not indicate that the
teachers who “organize activities such as games and songs in
the classroom”, “assign homework”, and “praise the students in
the classroom” are not good teachers; it seems to indicate that
these characteristics of an English language teacher are not as
appreciated as the others characteristics stated in the question-
naire.
In general the results seem to indicate that the elementary,
secondary and high school students perceive the affective char-
acteristics of a teacher as a dominant feature of a good English
language teacher (Table 3).
Research Question 2: Are there any differences among the
perceptions of the elementary, secondary and high school stu-
dents in terms of their perception of “a good language tea-
cher”?
The LSD test analysis showed that the students groups
Table 2.
Perceptions of student groups to the 24 questionnaire items in means.
Item Statements Group I Group II Group IIIOverall
Item 5: A good English teacher should not discriminate among the students. 4.90 4.80 4.83 4.84
Item 14: A good English teacher should be patient with the students and
should explain the subject to them when they don’t understand it. 4.76 4.86 4.83 4.82
Item 21: A good English teacher should have good affairs with the students. 4.64 4.68 4.54 4.61
Item 3: A good English teacher should be kind to his students. 4.75 4.45 4.49 4.55
Item 24: A good English teacher should apply for the views of the students in class activities. 4.68 4.62 4.38 4.54
Item 6: A good English teacher should know all his students very well. 4.45 4.45 4.44 4.44
Item 22: A good English teacher should be contact with the families of the students. 4.13 4.09 3.33 3.80
Affective characteristics
Item 2: A good English teacher should praise me and say nice words
in the class when I give the right answer. 3.94 3.00 2.77 3.17
Item 8: A good English teacher should be good at pronunciation. 4.79 4.66 4.66 4.70
Item 20: A good English teacher should have his /her students pay attention to the lesson. 4.62 4.70 4.63 4.65
Item 23: A good English teacher should teach well. 4.60 4.66 4.62 4.63
Item 4: A good English teacher should be able to create an entertaining
atmosphere to carry out the class activities. 4.41 4.56 4.66 4.56
Item 19: A good English teacher should have his students participate in the lesson. 4.61 4.68 4.29 4.50
Item 9: A good English teacher should do research on his subject and improve himself. 4.54 4.50 4.44 4.48
Item 16: A good English teacher should maintain discipline in the classroom. 4.41 4.54 4.13 4.34
Item 10: A good English teacher should consult to other lesson sources in addition to text books. 4.40 4.14 4.23 4.24
Item 18: A good English teacher should make a lesson plan. 4.60 4.45 3.98 4.23
Item 17: A good English teacher should manage to keep the class in silence. 4.32 4.45 3.98 4.23
Item 15: A good English teacher should have a great deal of teaching experience. 4.63 4.36 3.80 4.21
Item 13: A good English teacher should speak in Turkish most of the class time. 4.16 3.96 4.09 4.07
Item 11: A good English teacher should also use audio-visual aids when teaching. 4.11 3.96 4.10 4.06
Item 1: A good English teacher should have pair work and group work activities in the classroom. 4.09 4.00 3.87 3.97
Item 12: A good English teacher should have the class sing songs and
play some games relevant to the subject. 4.21 3.60 3.60 3.76
Teaching skills
Item 7: A good English teacher should assign homework to the students. 3.66 3.51 3.20 3.43

E. M. KOÇ
showed significance difference regarding the items 2, 3, 12, 15,
16, 17, 18, 19, 22 and 24 (Table 4). The results will be stated in
more detail for each significant item under the related sub-
category.
Teaching Skills
This sub-category constitutes items 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,
13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 23. According to the analysis the
student teachers in their perceptions in regard to characteristics
of good English language teachers for items 12, 15, 16, 17, 18
and 19.
The results for item 15 indicated that all the elementary
school (M = 4.63) and secondary school students (M = 4.36)
profoundly believe that to be a good teacher it is important to
have a great deal of teaching experience (Table 2). However,
high school students (M = 3.80) do not seem to believe this
concept as deeply as the elementary and secondary school stu-
dents. The results of the ANOVA (p < 0.000) test reveal that
there is a significant difference among student groups at the
level of 0.05. According to the LSD Test, there is a significant
difference between Group I and Group III (p < 0.0000) and also
between Group II and Group III (p < 0.0000) at the level of
0.05 (Table 4).
With respect to item 12 stating “A good English teacher
should have the class sing songs and play games relevant to the
subject”, Table 2 clearly shows that elementary school students
(M = 4.21) deeply feel that to be a good English teacher it is
very important to have the class sing songs and play some
games when compared with secondary and high school children.
The one-way ANOVA results (p < 0.000) indicate the groups
significantly differ in terms of their responses to Item 12 at the
level of 0.05. According to the LSD Test (Table 4), there is a
significant difference between Group I and Group II (p <
0.0000); and Group I and Group III (p < 0.000) at the level of
0.05, which means the elementary school students profoundly
think that one of the features of a good English teacher is to
have the class sing songs and play games relevant to the subject
whereas the secondary and the high school students think that
these activities are not so important.
With regard to item 18 which states that “a good English
teacher should make a lesson plan”, all the student groups (M =
4.28) appear to have a high tendency to believe that it is impor-
tant to make a lesson plan considered to be one of the features
of a good English teacher. The results the ANOVA test (p <
0.000) indicate a significant difference among the three groups
at the level of 0.05. Also, LSD test results indicate that such a
significant difference is between Group I and Group III (p <
0.0000); and Group II and Group III (p < 0.00001). This means
while the elementary and the secondary school students pro-
foundly believe making a lesson plan is an important character-
istic of a good language teacher, high school students do not
seem to believe this concept as profoundly as the other ones.
With respect to item 4, the results appear to show all the stu-
dent groups (M = 4.56) deeply believe that to be a good lan-
guage teacher it is important to carry out the class activities in
an entertaining atmosphere. What is interesting is that as the
grade level of the students’ increases, students’ belief of the
importance of carrying out the class activities in an entertaining
atmosphere considered one of the features of a god English
teacher seems to increase [(Elementary: 4.41, Secondary: 4.56;
High: 4.66)], which means while high school children seem to
think that carrying out the class activities in an entertaining
atmosphere is very important, the elementary school children
find it less important.
With respect to item 19 which states that “a good English
teacher should have his students participate in the lesson”, all
the student groups (M = 4.50) think that having the students
participate in the lesson is important if a teacher wants to be
considered as a good one. The High school students (M = 4.29)
seem to give less importance to this conception. Analysis of
variance (p < 0.000) indicate that there is a significant differ-
ence among the three student groups at the level of 0.05. The
LSD test results also reveal that these significant differences are
between Group I and Group III (p < 0.006); and Group II and
Group III (p < 0.00006) at the level of 0.05, which means the
elementary and the secondary school students think a good
Table 3.
Each student group’s overall mean scores for the two sub-categories.
Affective Characteristics Teaching Skills
Group I 4.53 4.36
Group II 4.95 4.04
Group III 4.20 4.14
Overall 4.56 4.18
Table 4.
The list of LSD (least significance degree) test scores for items which are significant at p < 0.05.
Sub-Category Item NoElementary-Secondary School students
(Group I & Group II)
Elementary-High School students
(Group I & Group III
Secondary-High School students
(Group II & Group III)
Item 15 0.000 0.000
Item 12 0.000 0.000
Item 18 0.000 0.000
Item 19 0.006 0.000
Item 16 0.000
Teaching Skills
Item 17 0.001
Item 2 0.000 0.000
Item 3 0.009
Item 22 0.000 0.000
Affective Characteristics
Item 24 0.007
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E. M. KOÇ
English teacher should have his/her students participate in the
lesson whereas the high school students seem to find it less
important.
It is a surprising finding that student groups appear to believe
a good English teacher should maintain discipline (Item 16, M
= 4.34). Of three groups of students, high school students seem
to show the lowest degree of importance for item 16. An em-
pirical study of Wragg (1989) also supports this finding. Wragg
has found the fact that teachers are expected to be firm but fair.
Teachers who are bossy or punitive are not esteemed, but nei-
ther the ones who are too permissive, which means the concept
of maintaining discipline in the classroom is deeply believed to
be an important feature of a good English teacher by the ele-
mentary and the secondary school students while the high
school student find it a less important feature.
Similarly, for item 17 which states “a good English teacher
should manage to keep the class in silence”, the statistical find-
ings reveal that the groups. This means, high school students do
not believe that keeping the class in silence is a characteristic of
a good language teacher as profoundly as the elementary and
secondary school students do.
Affective Characteristics
The second main part covers items 2, 3, 5, 6, 14, 21, 22 and
24.
Results for item 2 indicate that as the grade level of the stu-
dents increases, they show lower tendency for being praised
(Elementary: 3.9 ; Secondary: 3.0 ; High: 2.7). ANOVA results
indicate that there is a significant difference among groups (p <
0.000) at the level of 0.05. Table 4 indicates that there are sig-
nificant differences among groups and these such a significant
differences exist between 1) Group I and Group II (p < 0.000)
and 2) Group I and Group III (p < 0.000) at the level of 0.05,
which means the elementary school students consider being
praised by a teacher as a feature of a good English teacher
while the high school students do not consider it so important
and the secondary school students cannot decide whether a
good teacher should praise them or not. This finding is sup-
ported by a study (cited in Cullingford, 1995) which has inves-
tigated the effect of individual praising on elementary school
children. It has been found that when the use of private praise
increases, the elementary school children’ academic achieve-
ment improves 20 per cent.
With regard to item 3, the elementary (M = 4.75), secondary
(M = 4.4) and high school students (M = 4.4) believe that a
good English teacher should to be kind to his/her students.
Regarding item 22, results indicate that all the students with
a mean score of 3.89 believe that a good teacher should be in
contact with the families of the students. It is interesting that as
the grade level increases, the degree of perception of impor-
tance decreases. While the elementary students (M = 4.13) have
the strong belief of importance for item 22, the high school
students (M = 3.33) have the lowest. ANOVA findings indicate
that there is a significant difference among the student groups
(p < 0.000) at the level of 0.05. LSD test indicates that there is a
significant difference between elementary school students and
high school students (p < 0.000) and between secondary school
students and high school students (p < 0.000) at the level of
0.05.
With regard to item 24 which states that “a good English
teacher should take the views of the students into consideration
in class activities”, all the student groups believe it is important
(M = 4.54) to take the students’ views into consideration of the
students in the class activities. This finding is also supported by
Wragg and Wood’s study (1984). According to the results of
Lin et al., 2000 (in Muijs & Reynolds, 2001) giving students
authority in the classroom can improve classroom climate and
encourage students to participate in the classroom.
Of the three student groups, the elementary school student
group (M = 4.68) and the secondary school student group (M =
4.62) seem to give more importance to item 24 when compared
with the high school students (M = 4.38). ANOVA (LSD test)
findings (see Table 3) indicate that the groups show significant
difference in term of their perceptions for item 24 (p < 0.000) at
the level of 0.05. The LSD test findings also show that there is
a significant difference between: Group I and Group III (p <
0.007 and Group II and Group III (0.02) at the level of 0.05.
This means the high school students do not think taking the
views of the students in class activities, which is considered as
a feature of a good English teacher, as important as the ele-
mentary and secondary school students do.
With regard to item 5, all the student groups seem to have the
highest perception degree of importance with a mean score of
4.90. This finding is likely to show that what the students in
three groups appreciate most is when the teacher does not dis-
criminate among the students and is fair to them.
The second teacher characteristic which received the second
highest mean score is “being patient with the student (item 14)”
for which all the student groups indicate a very high perception
degree of importance is item 14 (M = 4.82). This appears to
show that an English teacher’s being patient with students and
explaining the subject to them when they do not understand is
an important characteristic of a good English teacher. Similar to
this, Hollis (1935, cited in Wragg & Wood) analysed the rank
order of teachers’ attitudes expected by students and found that
the highest esteem was given to the teachers’ ability to explain
the difficulties in a patient way when the students asked for the
teacher to do.
In summary, although all the student groups believe it is
important for a good teacher to create an entertaining atmos-
phere, have the students participate in the lesson, be kind to the
students, take the views of the students into consideration in
class activities, manage classroom discipline and consult other
sources in addition to text books, they do not seem to find it
very important at all when the teacher assigns homework to the
students, praise the students by saying nice words in the class.
It is also striking that the student groups show significant
difference with regard to the degree of perception of impor-
tance for items 7, 2, 18, 22, 24 and 15. As the grade level in-
creases, the students find teacher’s being experienced in his/her
branch, teacher’s assigning homework to the students, teacher’s
praising students, teacher’s making a lesson plan, teacher’s
being in contact with the families of the students, teacher’s
having the class sing songs and play games, teacher’s taking the
students’ views into consideration in class activities less im-
portant characteristics of a good teacher.
Discussion
The purpose of the present study is to bring into focus the
EFL learners’ perceptions of “a good English Teacher”. The
present study has revealed that most of the student groups gen-
erally differ in terms of issues related to teaching skills when

E. M. KOÇ
compared with the issues related to the affective skills. This
result is consistent with Taylor (1962)’s cited in Wrag and
Wood, p. 80) study who investigated the primary and secondary
school students’ views on “a good teacher”. The analysis of the
students’ essays revealed that students’ “good teacher” concept
related with mostly to teaching skills (40%) and personal quali-
ties (25%).
In the present study it has been also found that what students
expect from a good English teacher is to have the ability to
maintain discipline, motivate students, learn about the learner’
needs and establish good relations with them. These findings
are also supported with many studies in the related field (Bark-
huizen, 1998; Stephens & Crawly, 1994; Burnett & Meachem,
2002).
Another finding is related to subject knowledge. Elementary
school children believe that having a great deal of teaching
experience is an important characteristic of being a good Eng-
lish teacher. On the other hand, high school students do not
seem to be appreciating the belief as strongly as the elementary
school children do. However, literature seems to support the
elementary school children’s view. In teacher education pro-
grammes teachers are exposed to a great deal of theory, and
given little chance to practise. Most of the time without having
time to integrate these two, they begin teaching. Burden (1990)
says that novice teachers, even though they have completed a
teacher training programme, have limited knowledge of teach-
ing activities; have limited knowledge about the teaching envi-
ronment and an image of the teacher as authority; have limited
professional insights and perceptions; and have feelings of un-
certainty, confusion. Majority of novice teachers begin their
careers with a feeling of “not adequate teacher”, rather than “a
bad teacher” (Newport & John, 1996). Thus, it is difficult to
believe that novice public school teachers who have received
considerable training in teaching, and who have one or two
years of teaching experience, could be considered to meet the
standards of an effective teacher.
The study also reveals striking results with respect to class-
room discipline. Elementary, secondary and high school stu-
dents believe that one of the characteristics of a good language
teacher is to maintain discipline. “Classroom Concept” is
strongly integrated with “classroom management”. Also, “ef-
fective teaching” and “classroom management” are two strong-
ly related issues. For effective teaching and to be an effective
teacher, good classroom management is required (Silvestri,
2001; Woolfolk, 1998; Wragg & Wood, 1984). According to
research on different aspects of classroom management, most
of the teachers, especially the novice teachers seem to lack such
characteristics that an effective language teacher should have
and regard classroom discipline [management] as their most
serious problem (Silvestri, 2001). Similarly, Woolfok (1998)
states some concerns of novice teachers such as classroom dis-
cipline, motivating students, and accommodating differences
among students. Teachers, especially the novice ones, should
be aware of the fact that teachers who regard classroom man-
agement as a process of achieving and also maintaining effec-
tive learning are better classroom managers than teachers who
regard it as being “authoritative and maintaining discipline”.
The other striking finding of the present study is that while
the grade level of the students increases the students’ strong
perception about the significance of making a lesson plan con-
sidered an important feature of a good English teacher de-
creases. That is, the elementary school students are likely to
give more importance to doing homework than high school
students and to some extend the elementary school students
may regard teachers’ making lesson plan as their doing home-
work which occupies most of their time.
Another set of finding is related with the appropriate usage of
materials and activities. Classroom entertainment activities
such as games, jokes, stories, and songs produce enjoyment. Ur
(1996) points out that such kind of entertainment arouses the
interest in the task and motivates students. They encourage
students to interact and communicate. The use of such activities
both increases the co-operation and competition in the class-
room. Thus, a successful, joyful and enthusiastic learning is
achieved in the language classroom. Similarly, using songs
create a non-threatening atmosphere for students who often feel
anxious to speak English in a formal classroom setting (Lo &
Fai Li, 1998). The present study interestingly reveals that only
elementary school students seem to like activities such as sing-
ing song and games. On the contrary, high school students do
not appear to have such a strong feeling about these activities.
They rather prefer translation, vocabulary drills. This is possi-
bly due to the fact that elementary school students do not have
sufficient English proficiency in terms of both vocabulary size
and grammar knowledge. Similarly, Liu and Littlewood (1997),
too, in their study report that one of the reasons why the ele-
mentary students are reluctant to participate in the classroom
activities is that they have limited experience in English. On the
other hand, high school students have a bit more considerable
amount of English proficiency activities requiring reading,
writing and grammar when compared with the elementary stu-
dents. “Age of the learners” is likely to be another discriminat-
ing factor. For example, while games motivate and attract the
attention of the primary school students, it is not an appropriate
activity for teenage students.
Another finding of the study is that students think it is im-
portant for a good language teacher to consult other teaching
aids in addition to text books. This may be due to the fact that
textbooks used in state schools are likely to be out of date and
cannot serve for a variety of activities to motivate students to
learn English.
Another striking finding of the study is that secondary and
high school students strongly believe that it is not a characteris-
tic of “a good” teacher to praise his students with encouraging
words. This finding is striking in that it is a general idea among
teachers that students like to be praised. However, high school
students do not seem to appreciate it. One possible explanation
can be that the teachers do not know which type of praise is
appropriate for their students. Muijs and Reynolds (2001)
though claim that teacher praise is one of the most frequently
used forms of rewards, not all praise is effective for different
grades. For the elementary school children stars, badges and
teacher’s praise with nice words are more effective while for
secondary and high school students privileges such as responsi-
ble roles in the classroom are more effective.
All the student groups appreciate teachers’ taking the views
of the students in the classroom as an important characteristic
of a good English teacher, which is another finding of the pre-
sent study. What is more striking is that as the grade level of
students’ increases, their agreement scores to the item decrease.
This may due to that elementary students are more willing to
participate and take responsibilities in classrooms when com-
pared with students at higher grades.
122

E. M. KOÇ
Conclusion
Implications of the Study
The study serves as a good source for language teachers to
compare their own perceptions and believes with that of the
students. Once language teachers are aware of their students’
perceptions, they can plan and implement behaviours and ac-
tivities that would encourage learners to get involved more in
the English language process, therefore lead to more language
learning and positive attitudes towards their teachers.
In the present study, it has been revealed that students expect
a good English teacher to have the ability to maintain discipline,
motivate students, to learn about the learners’ needs and estab-
lish good relations with them. Muijs and Reynolds (2001) have
found that good classroom discipline and a positive classroom
atmosphere are strongly related to each other, which suggests
that in practice effective teachers are able to strike the right
balance between two.
As trainees are likely to lack knowledge of the characteristics
of a good EFL teacher, such a study would likely provide tea-
cher education programmes with an opportunity to develop
trainees’ notions of being an effective EFL teacher.
Suggestions for Further Research
It is important to highlight that in this study only the percep-
tions of Turkish EFL learners’ have been taken under investiga-
tion. With respect to this, a further research which compares
teachers and students in terms of their perceptions of an effec-
tive teacher can be suggested.
The study also shows that all the group students feel it is an
important characteristic of a good English teacher to have
pair-work and group-work activities. However, teachers have
some concerns when performing group work activities in the
classroom in terms of controlling the students (Daloğlu, 2001).
This concern can be partly due to the fact that the teacher edu-
cation programmes focus on a more theoretical education and
cannot provide enough opportunities to put such theoretical
knowledge into practice. Johnson (1996) supports this and com-
ments on it as follows: “teachers get too much theory, however
too little practice and can not put into the theory into effective
classroom practice.
Research has shown that perception of learners and percep-
tions of teachers do no match (Block, 1994; Kumaravadivelu,
1991). Therefore, further research should be conducted to in-
vestigate teachers’ concerns in order to help them gain the abil-
ity of co-ordinating students better for collaborative work. The
teacher education system aims to train teachers who are quali-
fied and who can achieve effective teaching. Taking this fact
into such a development in the curriculum, another suggestion
for further research is that a study should be conducted to in-
vestigate the role and the effectiveness of the new curriculum in
terms of to what extend it has helped the students to integrate
theory and practice.
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