Abstract
There were various studies on what outstanding foreign language teachers are like, but new trends show that much more emphasis has been laid on how they behave themselves in the classrooms. Moskowitz (1976) proposed thirty-six characteristics of foreign language teachers and compared outstanding foreign language teachers with very poor ones concerning them. I devised forty characteristics of Japanese language teachers and did empirical research on the characteristics students demand of outstanding teachers. I concluded that the characteristics could be grouped into four factors as a result of factor analysis. The first factor is teachers' professional awareness of affective teaching. The second one is the knowledge of target language and other know ledge. The third one is the knowledge of methodology and practical competence of teaching. The fourth one is the interpersonal skills and empathetic understanding of students' feelings. I also concluded that the fourth factor could be ranked first, the first one second, the third one third and the second one fourth. This shows that Japanese language learners consider the fourth factor the most important and the first one the second most important. Basically these two factors can be boiled down into the affective and social variables in foreign language education.
