This study aims to investigate the similarities and differences between a small group of Iranian expert and novice EFL teachers' conceptions of good learning through the eye of effective teaching and their actual practice. The five expert and five novice EFL teachers in this study were selected based on seven criteria: their teaching experience, TOFEL scores, students' evaluation, supervisor evaluation, academic certificate, research background, and their teaching practice, observed based on a checklist made by the researcher. To collect data, the participants were interviewed. They were asked a list of questions gathered from the existing literature on the similar topics to find the similarities and differences in their conceptions regarding effective teaching. Afterward, their classes were observed for several sessions to capture the participants' similarities and differences in how they actually taught in class. A post-interview followed each class observation to explore more about the reasons behind their moves in class. These steps were taken to find the expert and novice teachers' beliefs about effective teaching in talk and practice. The interviews were transcribed and imported to NVivo7 program for analyzing through coding the data. Eventually, the researchers came up with some major nodes i.e. the experts' and novices' main conceptions of effective teaching. The data were then compared with respect to how they actually performed in class. Broadly speaking, six central tendencies in their talk and practice were obtained as indicators of good learning: Achievement in tests, learners’ emotional aspects, language production, transfer of learning, and monitoring classmates and teachers’ mistakes. The findings of the present research propose that novice teachers need to be made aware of the importance of these indicators of good learning especially academic aspects of teaching along with affective dimensions in their educational programs.