Thsi 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 order to improve their students' learning. The participants in this project called for a more prominent position of grammar within their language teacher education and identified their need to acquire more 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 recomment 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.