Teaching Styles and Optimal Guidance in English Language Major

The purpose of this research paper was to investigate what level of guidance Iranian EFL instructors and students deem as optimal. For this purpose a theoretical framework which positions teaching styles on a continuum from the one which provides maximal guidance to the one which provides minimal guidance was employed. The participants in this study were 306 college students and 36 faculty members. The results showed that whereas the students consistently preferred teaching styles that provided moderate guidance, the instructors preferred different teaching styles with varying degrees of guidance depending on the nature of the course they taught.