Abstract
A plethora of researchers have attempted to examine the characteristics of a good and effective teacher in order to enhance the process of teaching foreign languages. In line with those explorations, this study aims at performing a comparison between Slovak pre-service EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ and Slovak in-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of a good and effective language teacher. To achieve this objective, a convenient sample of Slovak university EFL students who were pre-service teachers (n = 74) and Slovak lower-secondary and upper-secondary school teachers (n = 63) were employed in the study. Using a 57-item Likert-type questionnaire, independent-samples t-tests were conducted to investigate the potential differences between the perceptions of the pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. Moreover, the 10 highest-mean and 10 lowest-mean items of both groups were analyzed. The research results revealed that statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) were detected in only 12 of the 57 items. Furthermore, a closer examination of the differences and the items with the highest and lowest means indicated that the pre-service teacher participants favored traditional teaching more than their in-service teacher counterparts, who preferred CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) to a greater extent. The potential implications of these findings indicate that the fundamental principles of CLT such as employing plenty of pair-work and group-work activities, facilitating learners’ autonomy and responsibility for their own learning, or varying classroom interaction strategies deserve more careful attention during pre-service teacher training.
Highlights
Learning a foreign language is undoubtedly a complex process as one has to master both language skills and systems (Hundarenko, 2019; Hojatpanah & Dashtestani, 2020; Kapranov, 2020; Lacková, 2019; Leláková & Šavelová, 2020; Putrawan, 2019; Stognieva, 2019; Todaka, 2020) in order to become an effective language user
Teachers are allowed to find ways to overcome those features that are less valued or regarded as inappropriate in a specific teaching/learning context, the need for further investigation in this area. It is typically the position of a facilitator that language teachers hold, foreign language instructors occupy an instrumental role when it comes to effective language learning and teaching
The findings indicated that statistically significant differences exist between the two groups in favor of the English language teaching department
Summary
Learning a foreign language is undoubtedly a complex process as one has to master both language skills and systems (Hundarenko, 2019; Hojatpanah & Dashtestani, 2020; Kapranov, 2020; Lacková, 2019; Leláková & Šavelová, 2020; Putrawan, 2019; Stognieva, 2019; Todaka, 2020) in order to become an effective language user. Teachers are allowed to find ways to overcome those features that are less valued or regarded as inappropriate in a specific teaching/learning context, the need for further investigation in this area. It is typically the position of a facilitator that language teachers hold (and despite the fact that recently, the teacher-centered learning model has shifted towards a learner-centered learning model [Namaziandost et al, 2019]), foreign language instructors occupy an instrumental role when it comes to effective language learning and teaching. The literature offers various significant findings regarding the features related to effective EFL teaching and learning (Al-Mahrooqi, Denman, Al-Siyabi, and Al-Maamari, 2015).
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