What They Need to Know and Know They Need

This paper investigates the perceptions of a group of second/foreign language teacher education students in terms of the following: what they need to know about the language they teach and what from their own language learning experiences can they utilize in their teaching in order to improve their students ’ learning. Data were gathered from eight teacher education students at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia through a semi structured interview. The participants in this project called for a more prominent position of grammar within language teacher education and identified their need to acquire knowledge in the domains of language acquisition, linguistics and intercultural communication. In addition, they reflected on their language learning experiences and identified those strategies that they would recommend to their learners. Insights gained through this project are presented with a view to contributing to the design of teacher education programs based on students’ perceived needs