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چکیده
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This study investigated the EAP teachers’ characteristics as perceived by Iranian EAP professors and students. For this purpose, a five-point Likert-scale teacher characteristics questionnaire developed and validated by Soodmand Afshar and Hamzavi (2017), which drew mainly upon Borg (2006), was administered to 153 English language students in different levels of education (BA/BSc, MA/MSc and PhD) and 25 professors (i.e., faculty members) with different status or ranks (assistant professor, associate professor and full professor) at different universities across the country. A semi-structured interview was also conducted with 20 students and 10 professors to triangulate the data and to shed more light on the issue under investigation. The results of both questionnaire survey and the interview revealed that both students and professors were approximately of the same opinion regarding EAP teachers’ characteristics, with both highlighting EAP teachers’ professional qualities (e.g., being knowledgeable, having sufficient general proficiency in English, being able to convey knowledge, etc.) and psychological or behavioral characteristics (e.g., being polite and respecting the personality of the students, being open to criticism, showing interest in students, being flexible, alleviating students’ anxiety, being friendly to students etc.). They, however, significantly differed in assigning weight to those characteristics. Moreover, there were few areas in which there was a significant difference between students’ and professors’ perspectives such as knowing English culture well, following syllabus tightly, being attentive in the class, assessing his/her work regularly, not losing temper, etc.
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