Effective EFL University Teachers: Measuring Students’ Perceptions

Abstract

Investigating perceptions of an effective university English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher has been an ongoing topic in the last few years. However, those studies have focused only on teachers’ perceptions, not students’ perceptions, from the Latin American context and mainly based on Likert scales questionnaires. This study aims to determine university students’ perceptions of what they distinguish as effective EFL university teachers. Based on the CEMEDEPU questionnaire, a new instrument called Effective EFL University Teacher (EEFLUT) of 71 items was created and applied to students from an Ecuadorian public university (N=716). A Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted using AMOS 21 software to evaluate three models. The third model was chosen as the most accurate amid its great performance. This model has three main dimensions (Personal Qualities, Teaching-Learning Methodology, and Assessment Methodology). The reliability of the instrument was evaluated with the KR-20, which showed that two out of three dimensions presented high reliability of >.900. The findings demonstrate that the students value Personal Qualities (PQ) as the most relevant feature of an effective EFL university teacher above the Teaching-Learning Methodology and Assessment Methodology. These results reflect the importance of the participants attribute to the teacher’s personal qualities as one of the components of their satisfaction in learning language.