Young Learners’ Perceptions on Effective Foreign Language Teacher Characteristics – A Qualitative Study from Croatia

This paper provides a researcher’s account of the qualitative methods used in a research whose aim was to identify effective foreign language teacher characteristics as seen by elementary school learners. This study was part of a larger quantitative research which involved 596 children aged between 9 and 14 years from 3 urban schools in Croatia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants chosen from the representative sample by using a non-random method. The present paper and the findings of the research will hopefully contribute to growing debates about qualitative methodology for working with children as well as to the description of a competent foreign language teacher as the prerequisite for the overall quality of the foreign language teaching process.