Exploring the Relationship between Global Personality Traits and Attitudes toward Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between global personality traits and attitudes towards foreign language learning in a Turkish context. The participants were 157 university students majoring in English as a foreign language (EFL) at a state university. Goldberg's (2001) International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) was used to assess the participants’ perceptions of global personality traits and the Attitudes towards Foreign Language Learning (A-FLL) scale (Vandewaetere and Desmet, 2009) was employed to measure their attitudes towards foreign language learning. Findings demonstrated statistically positive correlations between five big personality traits and attitudes towards foreign language learning. Findings also showed statistically significant relationships between cognitive component, affective/evaluative, and behavioral and personality components of attitudes towards foreign language learning (A-FLL) and Big-Five personality traits. Additionally, openness was the strongest predictor of cognitive component; conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability and openness were the predictors of affective/evaluative component, and emotional stability, agreeableness and openness were found to greatly contribute to the prediction of behavioral/personality component. Gender differences were also observed in exhibition subcomponent of behavioral component. Based on the findings of the present study and the diagnostic implications obtained regarding the participants’ personality it becomes evident that getting a clearer picture of students’ personality traits and their attitudes towards language learning at the beginning of the course might lead to better learning outcomes.