TESOL TEACHERS’ DIVERGENT REFLECTIVE THINKING ON WHAT MAKES A LANGUAGE TEACHER “GOOD”

Current literature reflects disparate characteristics of good language teachers: Harmer (2008) suggests that good language teachers should have sufficient knowledge of the language; studies from Grundy et al., (2005) and Mullock (2003) both suggest the importance of teachers’ ability to understand students’ needs, while Brown (1994) discusses the importance of the desire to upgrade teaching skills. With divergent views concerning numerous characteristics that can improve one’s language teaching skills and enhancing teaching/learning effectiveness, it seems logical to assume teachers have their beliefs on what characteristics of good language teachers are more important than others. To this end, taxonomy with the characteristics of good language teachers drawn from the literature was developed by the researcher. Through ranking these characteristics in the taxonomy, this study explores what points of agreement or divergence emerge from the rankings by Chinese college TESOL teachers in Taiwan. Findings show that even with limited characteristics of good language teachers presented in the taxonomy, colleagues at the same department and school still have conflicting rankings. It was also revealed that the characteristics they perceived as important when they were students are quite different from those characteristics they currently perceive to be important. This research revealed that Chinese TESOL colleagues have strikingly different beliefs about the important characteristics of good language teachers, as well as demonstrated the importance of reflection by language teachers upon their own beliefs and the need to share those beliefs with their students.