Characteristics and Pedagogical Behaviours of Good EFL Instructors: The Views of Selected Southeast Asian and Mexican SLTE Students

Abstract

This article reports on the views of selected Southeast Asian and Mexican second language teacher education students regarding the characteristics and pedagogical behaviours of good EFL instructors. A total of 116 participants from Mexico, Brunei, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam took part in the current investigation. These countries have all been characterized as pedagogically conservative and slow to adopt educational innovations. Data was gathered using the repertory grid technique and was subjected to content, cluster, and principal component analyses. Results foregrounded the importance placed on teachers’ positive personality traits. Most significantly, findings indicated a preference for modern teaching approaches among the research participants, despite the pedagogic conservatism of their home countries.

What Makes an Effective English Language Teacher? The Life Histories of 13 Mexican University Students

“…The students placed significant emphasis on the human element; they valued a positive teacher-student relationship in which they felt comfortable, and greatly appreciated teachers who they perceived to care about them and their learning. Again, these findings are consistent with other case studies in the literature (Barnes & Lock, 2010;Brosh, 1996;Chen, Y-J, Lin, 2009;Han, 2017;Richter & Lara Herrera, 2017).…”

“…Secondly, on the whole, the students preferred teachers who made learning engaging, active and meaningful, and did not like teaching that was unappealing, passive, overly theoretical with too much use of the L1. These findings generally support those found in the literature (Alimorad & Tajgozari, 2016;Barnes & Lock, 2010;Kourieos & Evripidou, 2013;Oskouei et al, 2018;Richter & Lara Herrera, 2017). Indeed, although certain participants made reference to needing more 'conservative' approaches at times (as in Brown, 2009), the overwhelming tendency was towards more 'modern' approaches.…”

“…The present study develops the work of authors such as Barnes and Lock (2010) and Richter and Lara Herrera (2017). It is an inductive, emic study in which the students themselves were able to express their own views of effective language teaching.…”

“…Secondly, the teachers' personality and their ability to maintain positive relationships with students are consistently highlighted as extremely important. Thirdly, students tend to favour more 'modern', active, student-centred approaches as opposed to more 'conservative', passive, teacher-centred approaches (the terms 'modern' and 'conservative' are used in this study, as in Richter and Lara, 2017).…”

“…A final study worth mentioning is the work of Richter and Lara Herrera (2017). This research was especially pertinent to the present study; firstly, because it was the only relevant study to include participants from Mexico, but also because it employed a rather innovative 'repertory grid' method.…”