EFL undergraduate students‟ perspective about the characteristics of the effective instructor at Hashemite University in Jordan

Abstract

Researchers in different educational fields regard the instructor as an important factor which influences students‟ progress. Since students have a direct relationship with the instructor, the researcher has found it necessary to explore their perspectives about the instructors‟ characteristics in the teaching-learning context. To achieve this, 190 students responded to a five-point Likert scale questionnaire and 25 responded to an open-end interview question. The researcher used Descriptive statistics, such as the t-test and ANOVA. He also categorized the data obtained from the open-end interview. Results of the study indicated that students attributed the most effective quality in the instructor to knowledge. Results also revealed significant differences in male and female students‟ responses to the evaluation attribute category and to the five categories as a whole. With regard to the open-ended interview, results showed that the students‟ views differed with their attitudes in terms of focus and agreed in general with students‟ views in other research studies.