Investigating Relationship between EFL Teachers’ Personality Traits and Fluency Ratings

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the connection between EFL teachers" personality traits and fluency perceptions, assuming that personality could play a role in deciding listeners" fluency perceptions in the EFL context. Twenty-four listeners (13 NSs and 11 NNSs of English teachers) were asked to judge the fluency of 28 Korean high school students" narrative speech samples and complete the Big Five Aspects Scales personality test (DeYong et al., 2007). Listeners" mean fluency ratings were compared to their personality scores. Statistical analysis results indicated that Extraversion, one of the Big Five personality traits, was moderately correlated with fluency scores in the expected direction, suggesting that more extraverted people rated L2 speech as fluent. On the other hand, the other four traits were not substantially associated with fluency scores. This study not only emphasizes the significance of personality in influencing fluency perception, but also shows that fluency scores assigned by EFL teachers should be interpreted with caution. It opens up the possibility of using a more objective and accurate automated scoring method to assess oral fluency.