SOURCE

S. Saafin, “How to Help Students Learn English Better: Towards Creating a Language
Learning Culture”, English Language Teaching, vol. 12, no. 9, pp. 126–136, 2019.

INTRODUCTION
This critical review thoroughly analyses the article taken from the above-
mentioned source titled “How to Help Students Learn English Better: Towards Creating
a Language Learning Culture”. The author of this article is Saleh Saafin from the
Language Institute of University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. This article was
published online on 2 September 2019. To begin with, this critical review will first
provide an article summary that offers a brief explanation of the entire article followed by
a summary of the main findings and key arguments. Secondly, this critical review will
present the article structure involving the main points of the article and a few examples.
This part will also include the author's purpose and the organization of the text article.
The next part of this critical review is the article evaluation or critique in which strengths,
weaknesses and important features of the text will be discussed and evaluated. Lastly,
this critical review will conclude the review with a restatement of the overall opinion of
the article by providing recommendations and further explanations of the judgements
made.

ARTICLE SUMMARY
The aim of the study was to investigate Arab university students’ perspectives of
effective teaching that aided them in learning English as a Foreign (EFL) better. This
study adopted an interpretative approach to the research, and the data was collected in
three phases. An interview was conducted in Phase One (P1) with 17 university
students who were studying English in Intensive English programs from four different
higher educational institutions. In Phase Two (P2), a qualitative questionnaire that
consisted of 3 open-ended questions was given to 165 students who did not participate
in Phase 1. In the last phase which is Phase Three (P3), follow-up interviews were
conducted with four students from all the higher educational institutions to collect further
information about the effective teaching characteristics identified in Phase One and
Phase Two. The findings of the study revealed that effective EFL teaching had two
major themes namely instructional skills and human characteristics. A wide range of
attributes and behaviours were classified under each theme. This study also found that
creating a good learning environment overlaps with many other characteristics and
practices of effective teachers such as friendliness, encouragement, having a sense of
humor, having fun, maintaining class control, interacting with students inside and
outside the class, showing flexibility and being helpful.

ARTICLE STRUCTURE
The main strength of an article primarily lies on the way the author organizes his
thoughts with regards to a comprehensive writing. In this article, the author, Saleh
Saafin's writing style is concise, clear, well-organized and the write-up is also easy to
read and to comprehend. Other than that, the terminologies used in this article are
understandable as they provide a solid grasp of the content of the article for its readers
and suit the intended audience who are most likely English language teachers or
students.

Apart from that, the author also has included proper headings and sub-headings to ease
the sequencing of information. The information is organized in a coherent manner that
offers a good flow of points which guides the readers from one part to another. The
author has outlined all the information in a progressive style whereby as the reading
progresses, the knowledge of the article is also developed. To illustrate, the author
began writing the article with an abstract that provides a general summary of his work
containing all the main arguments and the important results and evidence in the paper.
The abstract identifies the research purpose and also introduces the key concepts like
English teaching, characteristics, learning culture, effective teachers and students'
perceptions. The abstract helps the readers to clarify the main purpose for writing the
research and stimulate the readers’ interest to continue reading further.
What followed next is the introduction of the article which leads the readers to a
particular field of research. The author established the context of the research being
conducted by summarizing current understanding and background information about
the topic. The author also stated the aim of the study which was to investigate the
Arab's tertiary institution students' perceptions on the qualities of effective teachers of
English as a Foreign Language (EFL teachers) in United Arab Emirates (UAE). The
author then described the rationale for conducting the research by defining the research
gap. According to Saafin (2019), many past studies focused on specific teaching
behaviours that were identified by teachers and educational experts, but none focused
enough on the perceptions of students regarding effective teaching qualities. Hence
why, the author chose to probe the perceptions of students on effective teaching as the
study can imply a new view of effective EFL teaching.

Under a separate heading for Literature Review, the author mentioned and discussed
about various past studies pertaining to qualities of effective teaching and teaching
behaviours that were shared between general education and foreign languages. The
author also stated that despite many past studies, the concern lies in not having
sufficient effective research findings for teacher behaviours that can be applied to many
disciplines. A research conducted by Borg (2006) was cited and elaborated by the
author. In his research, Borg (2006) studied the views of practicing and perspective of
EFL teachers on what differentiates EFL teachers from teachers of other subjects. His
research revealed that EFL teachers are distinctive from teachers of other fields by
presenting five themes namely nature of language, complex language, content
teaching, close relationship between teachers and learners and lastly the contrasts
between native and non-native language teachers.

According to Saleh Saafin, Borg's study was later enhanced by a research conducted
by Lee (2010) which introduced four similar dimensions of EFL teachers as identified by
Japanese college students. The four dimensions are the complex nature of the subject
matter, the content of teaching, teaching approach and teacher personality. After
explaining the general views, the author found it more logical to discover findings from
past studies related to qualities of effective teachers from students' point of view as this
article aimed to explore the students' perceptions of good EFL teachers. Hence, he
cited his own past research which aimed to identify the perceptions of 136 Arab
university students in the UAE on the qualities and practices of the teachers that they
consider as effective. The respondents were told to write their views about the teachers'
characteristics that they perceived as effective. The results revealed that there were
some important attributes that frequently emerged from the data such as being flexible,
being helpful, treating students with respect, being friendly, having a sense of humour,
being dedicated, being fair, being a role model, being knowledgeable of his/her subject
matter, being patient, smiling, and lastly giving the students the chance to speak and to
ask questions. The author then explained about a study by Taqil and Akbar (2014)
which investigated the perspectives of 150 EFL undergraduate Arab students in Kuwaiti.
A 28 item questionnaire consisting of four general categories, i.e. English language
proficiency, educational perception, organization and communication skills and social
and emotional skills was used to collect the data for this study. The findings revealed
that all these four categories were important for the students with a heavier weight
placed for the social and emotional skills than the other categories.

In the next source cited in the article, a research was conducted by Kourieos and
Evripidou (2013) aimed to seek the perceptions of Cypriot students on the attributes of
effective EFL university teachers. A questionnaire consisting of 35 items was
administered to 110 students and focus group interviews involving 18 students were
held to collect the data for this research. The findings then were grouped into three
categories which are personal and interpersonal characteristics, subject-matter
knowledge and approach to language teaching. The findings of this study orbited
around student-centered learning whereby the teachers were no longer dominants in
the classroom environments but rather supportive towards promoting classroom
discussions and interactions involving group tasks and collaborative sessions relating to
real life topics with regards to using authentic language.

Additionally, Berlin (2000) used the interview method to interview 47 international

students who were enrolled in an EFL programme at the University of Arizona to identify
the traits of good EFL teachers. The same students later completed a qualitative
questionnaire to contribute to the research findings. The results revealed five practices
of good EFL teachers which are taking into consideration the individual differences,
making connections to the real world, establishing a good relationship with students,
having a sense of humor and loving students.

A similar study was conducted by Barnes (2010) through a free writing instrument. In his
study, 105 students from a Korean university were asked to express their opinions
about their own EFL teachers. Five main categories emerged in this study namely
rapport, delivery, fairness, knowledge of the target language as well as organization and
preparation. The next research by Barnes and Lock (2013) sought to measure the
importance placed by a total of 222 Korean University students on effective teacher
attributes. A quantitative survey questionnaire was employed in this study and the
results showed that students put a lot of emphasis on rapport followed by delivery,
impartiality, knowledge of the target language, and good preparation attributes.

Using open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, Chen (2012)

investigated 60 Thai university students’ perceptions of the characteristics of effective
EFL teachers. The findings identified two main dimensions. The first dimension involves
personal traits dimension which included emotions, kindness, fairness, lenience and
responsibility. The second dimension deals with teaching dimension that consisted of
lesson delivery, using English and Thai languages in teaching, organizing activities in
classroom and creating classroom atmosphere. Another similar research was
conducted in Thailand by Meksophawannagul (2015). The research aimed to seek the
viewpoints of 613 Thai university students and 35 teachers pertaining to effective
English teaching. For this purpose, two questionnaires that included quantitative and
qualitative items were employed to aid the research findings. The quantitative data
discovered that rapport was the most important category for students followed by
organization and preparation, delivery, fairness and knowledge and credibility. On the
other hand, through the quantitative data results, it was learnt that teachers believed
that the category consisting of two criteria namely organization and preparation was the
most important one followed by rapport, fairness, knowledge, credibility and delivery.
The qualitative data showed that rapport items were important, but students gave more
weight for these items. The qualitative data also revealed that well-prepared lessons
and providing fun activities during classroom lessons were important practices of
effective teachers.

Liando (2010) investigated the characteristics of the best EFL teachers as perceived by
126 students and 28 teachers in a university setting in Indonesia. A questionnaire
consisting of 43 items were given to the respondents as the data collection method. The
findings confirmed that both students and teachers agreed that best teachers should be
friendly, intelligent and are able to explain things well, nice, make the course interesting,
have a sense of humor, patient, give extra help, enthusiastic, give rewards and assign a
lot of homework. The results showed that personal traits were given more votes than
academic qualities. The next research was conducted by Said (2017). The research
aimed to investigate the perceptions of 270 undergraduate Indonesian students about
effective EFL behaviors. To obtain the data, a questionnaire was used by addressing
seven crucial areas of EFL educator qualities such as encouraging teacher contact,
developing cooperation with students, encouraging active learning, giving prompt
feedback, emphasizing time on tasks, communicating high expectations and respecting
diversity in talents and ways of learning. The findings of the research discovered that all
categories were considered important and useful for students, but three categories were
rated the highest which were employing effective learning techniques, giving prompt
feedback and communicating high expectations.
For the next heading which is Methodology, the researcher of this article used a
qualitative study design as the research design to secure the information required. To
obtain reliable results, the study was conducted using three phases involving the
respondents. Phase One (P1) involved a semi-structured interview to obtain all the
necessary in-depth information to describe the characteristics or traits of effective EFL
university teachers. For this purpose, 17 respondents were chosen from four different
higher educational institutions. Next is Phase Two (P2). In Phase Two, 163 participants
who did not take part in Phase 1 interview were selected as the research participants.
These respondents were required to answer a questionnaire that consisted of 3 open-
ended questions. These 3 open-ended questions were used in the interviews in Phase
One and proved to be the best informing questions; therefore, the purpose of this
questionnaire was to see to what extent the data collected from interviews from Phase
One represented the views of a broader group of students from Phase Two. In the next
phase which is Phase Three, follow up-interviews were conducted by the researcher.
The interviews aimed to further explore some of the categories that were perceived and
shared by the respondents from both Phase One and Phase Two. For this purpose,
only four participants were chosen to take part in the interviews conducted in Phase
Three.

The author conducted this study using respondents from four Intensive English
Programs in four major universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The
respondents are Arab students who were required to attend intensive English courses
for one whole year on average before enrolling into their vocational programs which are
taught using the English medium. The author has used purposive sampling in Phases
One and Three whereas in Phase Two, opportunistic sampling was used. Males and
females aged between 18 to 20 were the participants in all the three phases in this
study.

The findings of this study identified a large number of categories during the analysis of
the qualitative data which were then classified under two main themes namely
instructional skills and human characteristics. The instructional skills theme consists of
four main dimensions which were labeled as teaching approach, learning resources,
interaction and management. Each of these dimensions consists of a number of
teaching practices that the respondents considered effective. For instance, the
instructional skills theme highlighted the active role of teachers in helping students to
learn English. The dimensions of teaching approach included a lot of teaching skills and
practices that were classified under a variety of categories. The respondents in this
study considered using proper teaching methods and aiding them in understanding the
subject matter as the most significant practices of effective teachers. As learning a
foreign language is not a simple task and it requires comprehension, students need the
help of their teachers to try all ways to aid them in facing difficulties and learn the
language. Besides that, the respondents also strongly emphasized the necessity of
having interesting classes by selecting interesting topics, changing the teaching routine,
avoiding lecturing style, enabling them in using personalization language and talk about
themselves and their lives, organizing competitions and having fun. Such practices of
effective teachers are claimed to hold the attention of students and make learning more
authentic, enjoyable and simulating. The second dimension of the instructional theme
was learning resources. The findings of the study revealed that effective teachers did
not rely solely on the textbooks to teach English but rather they used other learning
resources such as printouts, worksheets, computer - based equipment and various
technology - based materials to improve the teaching and learning process in a
language classroom. The participants of this study also repeatedly indicated that
textbooks should not be the only learning resource for teaching English. It was
acknowledged in this research that diversifying the learning resources gave them the
chance to practice the language more and released them from the routine instructions
they should follow in each chapter of their textbooks and made their classes more
useful and interesting. The third dimension was interaction which inevitably gave the
participants the opportunity to practice speaking the target language. Almost all of them
highlighted the need for practising English and use it as a means of communication
inside and outside the classroom. This is how they could develop their language skills. It
was also reported in the study that in fact, the students criticized the teachers who kep
talking most of the time in class leaving very little time for students to interact or engage
using the target language. The fourth dimension of the teaching approach was
management. The participants felt that class control by the teachers was the most
important aspect of classroom management. Effective teachers were able to control
their classes well and this is claimed to be crucial for creating the right atmosphere for
teaching and learning.

The second major theme of effective teaching emerging in this study was the human
characteristics theme. The findings showed that the respondents gave more votes for
the human qualities than the teaching skills. This overemphasis on human traits of
teachers was consistent with the findings of Saafin (2008); Taqil and Akbar (2014);
Barnes and Lock (21013) and Liando (2010). This shows that the human element in the
Arab culture is very important. The respondents mainly identified interpersonal and
personal characteristics in the human theme. Teachers’ friendliness was found to be a
very significant factor in teachers’ interpersonal relationship with students. Friendly
teachers were expected to build bridges with students, interact with them inside and
outside the classroom, be informal and deal with them as friends. The participants also
put a lot of emphasis on being helpful as a characteristic of good teachers who were
willing to listen to students’ problems, give them advice and show support. Regarding
the personal characteristics, the respondents of this study believed that having a sense
of humor is a very important characteristic of EFL teachers. The perceived effective
teachers were able to maintain the interest of their students in class and create a good
learning atmosphere through their sense of humor. Teachers demonstrated their sense
of humor by joking, making funny comments and making body movements. The
respondents indicated that teachers’ sense of humor made classes interesting and held
their attention.

Based on this article written by Saleh Saafin, by having an overview of the descriptions
the respondents gave throughout the Three Phases, it can be seen that the essence of
the data was its orientation towards the idea of creating a learning culture for effective
language teaching. The author reviewed the data through different lenses and showed
that the respondents highlighted a web of instructional behaviors and practices as well
as personal and interpersonal characteristics of effective teachers that altogether drew
a bigger picture. This picture portrayed a learning culture that enabled the participants
to learn English more effectively. The need to understand the ways students perceive
effective teaching as behaviors and practices embedded in an effective English
language learning culture is significant because it implies a new view of effective EFL
teaching. In fact, according to the researcher, the idea of an effective learning culture
and insights into the characteristics of that culture, perhaps reveal an emerging theory
of effective teaching and learning of English as a foreign language.

ARTICLE EVALUATION/CRITIQUE

This article titled “How to Help Students Learn English Better: Towards Creating a
Language Learning Culture” is written by Saleh Saafin from the Language Institute of
University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. This article was published online by
Canadian Center of Science and Education on 2 September 2019 which indicates that it
is recent and is based on current scope of the EFL learning context.

Overall, this article has its own strengths and weaknesses. The main strength of an
article primarily lies on the way the author organizes his thoughts with regards to a
comprehensive writing. In this article, the author, Saleh Saafin's writing style is concise,
clear, well-organized and the write-up is also easy to read and to comprehend. Other
than that, the terminologies used in this article are understandable as they provide a
solid grasp of the content of the article for its readers and suit the intended audience
who are most likely English language teachers or students.

Apart from that, the author also has included proper headings and sub-headings to ease
the sequencing of information. The information is organized in a coherent manner that
offers a good flow of points which guides the readers from one part to another. The
author has outlined all the information in a progressive style whereby as the reading
progresses, the knowledge of the article is also developed. To illustrate, the author
began writing the article with an abstract that provides a general summary of his work
containing all the main arguments and the important results and evidence in the paper.
The abstract identifies the research purpose and also introduces the key concepts like
English teaching, characteristics, learning culture, effective teachers and students'
perceptions. The abstract helps the readers to clarify the main purpose for writing the
research and stimulate the readers’ interest to continue reading further.

Additionally, all the reviewed past studies in this article demonstrated that the notion of
effective teaching involves a wide range of dimensions, sub-dimensions and constructs
which are often not easy to prescribe as they frequently require the researchers to
utilize their skills to categorize the information using a range of themes. The reviewed
literature in this article also indicated that even though there is consensus among
researchers on certain traits and behaviors of EFL teachers, some other characteristics
or qualities were not discovered in some studies. The reason for the absence of some
qualities of effective EFL teachers in some studies could be due to the fact that the
reviewed studies investigated the perceptions of different learners from different
backgrounds, diverse cultures and from varied learning settings. This was clearly
highlighted by the author, hence filling the research gap is quite evident. The author of
this article; however, managed to support his segmentations of themes, dimensions and
sub-dimensions using proper headings, sub-headings and various features which
helped to ease the readers' understanding of the entire article.

As for the Methodology part, interviews were employed to collect data in Phase One.
According to Brown and Dowling (1998), interviews are considered to be a major
research instrument that explores the interviewees’ views of the subject matter
discussed. It is proven that the interview conducted has helped the researcher to gain a
better understanding of the perspectives of his respondents. Interviews also gave the
participants the freedom to express themselves while providing their own perceptions
over the topic that is being researched (Cohen et al., 2000:267). The researcher used
semi-structured interviews for Phases One and Three because this enabled him to
control the interview direction and focus the inquiry on the topic of the study. These
interviews were directed by a set of wide-ranging themes rather than a list of
prearranged questions. This gave the researcher more freedom to explore the
interviewees’ responses and capture the perceptions of the participants about effective
teaching characteristics of EFL teachers. The author also mentioned that a list of
interview questions were piloted on three university students from the same population
as the study sample. This is a very good approach as piloting a method prior to using it
on the chosen sample groups will provide an overview to the researcher on the do's and
don'ts (Blake, 2017). The author reported that the questions were understandable for
the students and answers provided made sense to the context of the questions asked.
The context of the interview entailed asking new questions that emerged during
interviews in order to obtain a certain piece of information or to verify another. The three
interviews conducted in Phase One, Phase Two and Phase Three took about thirty-five
to fifty minutes according to the researcher. After the interviews, it is reported that 17
informative students were chosen by the facilitators of the Intensive English Program
(IEP) in the four tertiary education institutions from United Arab Emirates (UAE). The
respondents were very reported to be very informative, forthright and motivated to talk
and share about what are the characteristics that make EFL teachers effective. This
helped the researcher to collect very rich data, so this observation to identify engaging
respondents is very crucial in a research completion process. All interviews were carried
out at the universities where the students studied. The medium of instruction used while
carrying out the interviews was Arabic. The interviews were then recorded after
obtaining the participants' consent. This shows that the author of this article is very
meticulous in his methods and data collection procedures.

Open-ended questionnaire was the second method of collecting data that was used by
the author of this study. According to Oppenheim (1992), questionnaire is one of the
most commonly used research tools that has been used in general education studies.
The author aimed to use the questionnaire to get an enhanced knowledge and deeper
understanding of the perceptions of Arab students from four different higher institutions
on what they refer to as effective EFL teachers. This is an effective method to probe into
the respondents' opinions on what makes an effective EFL teacher.

Next was the follow up interviews that were conducted using four respondents. The aim
of the follow up interviews was to get a deeper understanding of the characteristics of
effective teachers that were extracted from the data of interviews and questionnaires in
Phases One and Two. The researcher wanted to know exactly what students meant
when they said, for example, that an effective EFL teacher should be an understanding
person. Since there were many characteristics that were identified as important from the
perspective of Arab students, the researcher could not cover all of them in his four
interviews. Therefore, the high frequency categories were selected for more elaboration.
Interview questions were constructed and then translated into Arabic. The interview was
piloted with two respondents before it was used with the actual sample. Questions were
clear and answers made sense in relation to the questions. The interviews lasted
between 20-30 minutes each. After that four students from the four sites were recruited
for this phase. They were motivated to talk about such characteristics which they all
agreed on. The interviews were conducted in Arabic and recorded after getting the
participants’ permission. The author followed the research procedures thoroughly and
managed to yield good research finding by using various means of data collection.

Since three different means were used in this study for data collection approaches and
purposes, the researcher was able to provide valid findings. This iterative development
of the research instruments made the researcher confident that no single method would
color his data.
The researcher opted for an analysis of data by hand because he wanted to absorb the
data completely, become totally engaged with what the respondents said, and to read
what was between the lines. In analyzing the data gathered by means of the semi-
structured interviews, open-ended questionnaires and follow-up interviews, he used the
grounded theory methods recommended by Strauss and Corbin (1998). It should be
made clear that students’ language does not always map with the professional
language. Therefore, students’ discourse was followed when it did not match with the
professional one.

As for the layout for the Results of this research, the researcher has clearly written all
the main themes, dimensions, headings and subheadings using various features and
tools such as Bold, Italic, Numbering and Bulleting features. This helps to ease the
readers' understanding and comprehension of the findings of this study. As the
vocabulary used are simple to grasp and properly arranged, readers can relate to what
is conveyed without much effort or trouble.

In the contrary, the findings of this study revealed that there were a wide range of
attributes and behaviors of effective EFL teachers that were classified under two major
themes: instructional skills and human theme. Both themes were consistent with the
reviewed research studies (Berlin, 2000; Saafin 2008; Barnes, 2010; Barnes & Lock
2013; Liando, 2010; Chen 2012; Kourieos & Evripidou, 2013; Taqil & Akbar 2014;
Meksophawannagul 2015; Said, 2017). Hence, this study looks like a replicated version
from some past studies with an extensive measurement that ended in different themes
as concluded by the author.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this article written Saleh Saafin from the Language Institute of University
of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates titled “How to Help Students Learn English Better:
Towards Creating a Language Learning Culture” is a current study that was published
online by Canadian Center of Science and Education on 2 September 2019 which is
based on current scope of the EFL learning context. This study is beneficial for many
educators to acknowledge the kind of traits or characteristics that are expected by
students from them in order to conduct efficient language classes. Teachers can
develop some of the mentioned behaviours under the themes and dimensions to help
learners formulate interest and deepen understanding in the subject matter.

For future researchers who intend to expand the scope of this study, it is recommended
to include a larger sample size involving multi-national respondents to yield more
reliable results as a whole so that the findings are able to reflect various perspectives
from different learners.