Evaluating the Effect of Introversion and Extroversion on Adult EFL Learners’ Language Learning Abilities

Abstract

This research was designed to trace a point of major significance in the ELT world which is mainly how students’ personality affects the process of teaching and learning in foreign language classes. Many research papers were written about the effects of motivation and students’ interests in learning, and there is no doubt that character types affect student’s ability to acquire or learn a language. When it comes to pinpointing character types, all participants volunteered to be a part of the study and took the personality survey with full ease. The personality test chosen for this paper was 16personalities; an online test that is validated and based on Mayer Brigg’s type indicator theory alongside with Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types. In this research data was collected through out a mixed approach joining both quantitative and qualitative approaches divided into three main tools: 1- statistical analysis of students’ marks in all four skills to show if there is any mean deviation ratio between the marks of introverted or extroverted students.2- Teacher’s observation to validate the students’ characters within class and get further feedback. 3- teacher’s interviews to check perceptions about introverted and extroverted students in class. To triangulate the methods and try to get a valuable result, this study was conducted in a private language and training center in the city of Damascus, Syria. The result of this study concludes that there is no significant statistical difference between introvert and extrovert learners according to the comparative analysis conducted using SPSS. Even the interviews and teacher observations support the same point, introversion and extroversion do not play a major role affecting students results when it comes to language learning. Yet further research in this area is highly advisable whether a change in the scope of the study or variants of the research would yield enriching results to the literature on this topic.