teaching performance. The range of adjectives used to describe their teachers and their
performance is extremely wide. There are unambiguous positive terms, such as
"dynamic" and "patient". Such words were also unambiguous in the sense that they were
written in a context where it was clear that what the writer meant was to describe a good
teaching quality according to his/her own point of view.
Most of the learners seem to coincide that a good teacher is a dynamic teacher
(the word was used by several learners), which does not mean that she has got "the
knowledge". One participant said:
Ga': I only have had one good teacher, she was very dynamic, in her class I learned
but she also made me aware of what I knew
Other participant put it this way:
J: I did not Ieam anything...The teacher did know, but she was so boring, she should
have been more dynamic.
It is interesting to note that two learners, Ga and Gl, who will be mentioned later
as having two different concepts of the "bad teacher" referred to the same teacher as
being a good teacher. When they were asked to give reasons, both used the word
"dynamic" to describe her.
There were also some words and phrases whose meaning was not clear, for
instance, the use of the word "good" to describe a teacher.
The phrase bad teacher appeared to have varied, and very subjective, meanings
for different learners. For instance, for Ga, the bad teacher "teaches no grammar" but for
Gl a bad teacher she had "was very traditional, he taught us just grammar". Another
learner, J, reported that he did not Ieam because the "teacher only spoke in English",
whereas, K mentions that "teachers that only speak in English" were one of her best
learning experiences.
There were also other terms that were difficult to evaluate. For instance, one
participant uses the word "vague" to describe her experience in relation to the teaching
she was exposed to. When asked, she elaborated saying that "in class, she didn't
understand" because "the teacher did not have enough teaching skills and experience".
Among the "bad" experiences that learners reported were things such as " the teacher
forced us to Ieam by heart 10 words every week, without bothering to teach the
pronunciation", "they just taught us English for tourism", and "the teachers were so
boring", among others.
The other extreme of the cline is the notably bad teacher. Learners used rather