FL Students' and Teachers' Perceptions of Effective Teaching

In this book Dr. Alan Brown investigates the extent to which foreign language teachers' beliefs of ideal teaching practices and their perceptions of their own instructional strategies correspond with their students' beliefs and perceptions. This research also compares students' responses on his 21-item teaching evaluation instrument with their answers to the generic teacher and course evaluation (TCE) used by the institution where the study was conducted. The results demonstrated that in regard to a variety of methodological issues differences abounded, especially concerning what "effective foreign language teachers should" be doing. Not surprisingly, teachers appeared more convinced of the need to use communicative language teaching strategies such as group work and indirect error correction while their students responses reflected a desire for grammar-based instruction and more direct error correction. Finally, the 5-questions regarding teaching on the institution's TCE form correlated significantly with a composite score derived from students' responses on the 21 item evaluation instrument prepared for the study.