CHARACTERISTICS OF IRANIAN EFL TEACHERS OF HIGH SCHOOL AND LANGUAGE INSTITUTES

The aim of the present study was to compare the characteristics of Iranian EFL teachers teaching at high schools and those teaching in private language institutes. To this end, 100 teachers (40 high school and 60 language institute teachers) in Hamedan, Iran participated in the study. Data were collected through a five-point Likert-scale teacher characteristics questionnaire comprising 46 items mainly taken from Borg (2006). To further ensure the validity of the questionnaire, pilot testing and factor analysis were used. Also, using Chronbach’s Alpha, the reliability of the questionnaire was estimated to be 0.91. The results of independent samples t-tests indicated that overall, there was a significant difference between the characteristics of high school teachers and those of language institute teachers. Moreover, running chi square analysis, it was revealed institute teachers significantly outperformed high school teachers in 14 out of 46 items of the questionnaire including 'understanding spoken English well," "being available for the students," "Being punctual," "being open to criticism," "being polite and respecting the personality of students," "listening to student opinions and letting them express themselves," "showing interests in students and their learning." Implications include the need for high school teachers to be conscious about those teacher characteristics that highly contribute to language learners’ success learning an L2.

teacher characteristics, high school teachers, language institute teachers