Exploring students' perspectives on the characteristics of an effective English language teacher: An investigation within a Turkish university setting

The aim of this study is to examine the perspectives of English preparatory unit students on the characteristics of an effective English language teacher in a university setting. In addition, specific independent variables are addressed within the scope of this research because of the fact that they might cause significant differences in the students' perspectives on teacher characteristics. These variables are respectively "gender, age, the faculty of the student, English language learning time period, type of high school the student graduated from and the most important reason to learn English for the student." In accordance with these purposes, the research was conducted at Başkent University School of Foreign Languages English Preparatory Unit in the spring term of 2015-2016 Academic Year. The research design was built upon a quantitative data collection method. The sample group of the research consisted of 419 English Preparatory Unit students who were studying in B level in the spring term. The main research instrument was an adapted "Likert-scale" questionnaire consisting of three sub-categories related to teacher characteristics: 1) Personal and interpersonal characteristics of the EFL teacher, 2) Subject-matter knowledge of the EFL teacher, 3) Language teaching approaches of the EFL teacher. The essential quantitative data analysis techniques were used to analyze the data. According to the findings of this study, the personal and interpersonal characteristics of the EFL teacher were perceived as the most important components of teacher effectiveness by the participant students in general terms. "Subject-matter knowledge of the EFL teacher" followed these components as the second most important component of teacher effectiveness. According to the findings regarding the addressed variables in this study, gender variable showed the most remarkable difference in the investigation of the students' perspectives on teacher characteristics. That is to say, significant differences which indicate a major distinction in terms of the female students' perspectives were observed in the perspectives of the students on teacher characteristics. Accordingly, the female students' total agreement levels (reported as the mean scores) for all sub-categories and for each sub-category were higher than the male students' total agreement levels for these sub-categories. This significant difference can be interpreted as a kind of sensitivity towards teacher characteristics. Furthermore, the findings regarding "the type of high school variable" presented a significant difference based on one of the high school types and only in one of the sub-categories. In this regard, the "Subject matter knowledge of the English language teacher" was seen as a more important component in terms of effectiveness by the students who graduated from Vocational High Schools, Anatolian High Schools and General High Schools whereas this importance attached to the "Subject matter knowledge of the teacher" shows a decrease for the graduates of Private High Schools. It was also explored that the students' perspectives on the characteristics of an effective English language teacher do not differ according to their English language learning time periods, the faculties they are enrolled in and their English language learning reasons. All in all, although similar studies were conducted in the past, this study may present valuable implications both for the theoretical framework and for classroom practices by achieving a general understanding of student perspectives on teacher characteristics in a university setting and by highlighting the possible contributions of specific variables on these perspectives. Key words: Effective English language teacher, Students' perspectives, personal factors