The Effective EFL University Professor: An Insight into the Literature

Abstract

Defining effective EFL teachers has been a constant task for researchers and experts. In this context, many studies have been conducted in order to understand and diminish some problems that students and professors face in the teaching-learning process, even more so when we refer to teaching a foreign language. This study aims to identify the main effective EFL teacher traits from students’ perspectives based on the existing literature from the last seven years. The research method used was the documentary analysis, and the academic search engines used were Google Scholar, DOAJ, and Academia. In addition, some keyword search formulas were used, such as effective EFL teacher, teacher effectiveness, teacher characteristics, and students’ perceptions. Therefore, ten review articles have been analyzed. They are from the last seven years, and six are from the previous two years. These studies were focused on university level only. The features exposed in the studies showed that an effective EFL university teacher combines five dimensions (Subject matter knowledge, Pedagogical knowledge, Organization and communication skills, Socio-affective skills, and Teachers’ appearance). However, only three were the most relevant (Subject matter knowledge, Pedagogical knowledge, Socio-affective skills), so an effective EFL university teacher should combine those three main traits.