Differences in Teaching Styles and Oral Language Proficiency of Non-native English Speaker Teachers: As Perceived by the Iranian EFL Students

Abstract

Non-native English speaker teachers’ (NNESTs) dominant teaching styles and oral language proficiency have recently garnered considerable attention of researchers during the past several years. To determine whether they have been effective teachers from their students’ perspectives, this study intended to scrutinize the possible differences of Iranian senior BA and MA students’ perceptions of their non-native ESTs’ dominant styles of teaching together with oral language proficiency in between and across the universities on the whole. To this end, 103 senior EFL senior BA and MA students participated in the study by the use of multistage cluster sampling procedure from three universities of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Yasouj. For the purpose of data collection, one teaching style questionnaire (TSQ) and one analytic scale for assessing the oral proficiency (ASAOP) were utilized. Through inferential statistics, the results showed that no significant differences for teaching styles and oral proficiency were seen between BA and MA students perhaps due to being exposed to the same university teachers, educational environments, and inter- and intra-communications. Further, the students perceived the dominant teaching styles of their teachers across the three universities quite differently significant, for which history of universities, experience, educational facilities, educational environments, academic ranks of professors, research productivity, and teachers’ marking criteria were influentially involved. Subsequently, as regards the students’ perceptions of their NNESTs’ oral language proficiency, no crucial differences were reflected to occur among the three universities. Presumably, apart from their accent and pronunciation, NNESTs’ interestingness, over-preparedness, qualification, and professionalism have considerably affected their students’ perceptions. Through this study, one can reap benefits from the pedagogical implications of the attained results within the academic settings of the Iran country.