Who are Good and Poor Language Learners: EFL Teachers' vs Learners' Perceptions

Who are Good and Poor Language Learners: EFL Teachers' vs Learners' Perceptions

This qualitative and quantitaive study is an investigation into Iranian EFL teachersʹ and learnersʹ perceptions of good and poor language learners with an eye on where the beliefs of these two groups coincide. The study was an attempt to scrutinize the most commonly held beliefs on successful and unsuccessful language learners by EFL teachers and learners. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total number of 110 elementary EFL learners (95 males and 15 females) and 20 male language teachers with 1 to 12 years of teaching experience. General trends were found in the features mentioned by the teachers and learners for good and language learners. The results revealed that the teachersʹ viewpoints revolved mainly around the communicative ability of the successful language learners outside the classroom milieu while the learnersʹ viewpoints were found to be more traditional in nature, emphasizing the teacherʹs authority, and the learnersʹ discipline inside the classroom setting and their steady practice as the main criteria to distinguish between good and poor language learners. The findings clearly indicated that the learnersʹ perceptions of un-/successful language learners stand in contrast to their teachersʹ. In conclusion, this mismatch can have serious negative connotations on the learning behavior of the learners in the long run. Implications and suggestions for further study in this regard are discussed