Personality and L2 learning 13.12.

2022

Personality
--> Personality - a distinctive and relatively stable pattern of behavior, thoughts, motives, and emotions that
characterizes an individual (Wade and Travis: 1990, p.386).
--> Personality - the more or less stable and enduring organization of a person’s character, temperament, intellect
and physique which determines their unique adjustment to the environment (Eysenck, 1986).

Temperament
-->Temperament - is the central part or core of personality
--> According to Child (1986 p.240), temperament is a quality we reserve to describe the inherent disposition
underlying personality. Contrary to personality, which is shaped in the later stage of life, temperament is inborn.

Temperament vs. Personality

TEMPERAMENT PERSONALITY
- Biologically based - Product of exogenous influences
- Identified from - Emerges at later stages of development
infancy
- Individual - Prerogative of humans
differences observed
in animals as well

Personality
--> Personality - the unique and relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, and behave.
--> Temperament - the enduring characteristics with which each person is born.
--> Character - value judgments of a person’s moral and ethical behavior.

Biology and Personality

o Twin and adoption studies have found support for a genetic influence on many personality traits.
o James Arthur Springer and James Edward Lewis, otherwise known as the “Jim” twins. Although separated
shortly after birth and reunited at age 39, they exhibited many similarities in personality and personal habits.

Theories of personality
-->The theory of Hippocrates - the body consists of four humors or body fluids such as: blood, phlegm, black bile
and yellow bile and were produced by different parts of the body, namely liver, lungs, gall bladder
and spleen respectively.
-->The four humors were later associated with different types of temperament
-->Blood - sanguine temperament
-->Phlegm- phlegmatic temperament
-->Black bile- melancholic temperament
-->Yellow bile- choleric temperament
Theories of personality
--> Jung popularized the terms extraversion and introversion
--> Introverts are timid and reserved. They avoid contact with people and they hide their feelings and energy within
the self. Jung calls them impenetrable individuals who are often poorly adjusted to their social environment
--> Extraverts, on the contrary, focus on everything in the external world. They have no problems with finding
themselves in new external situations. They are outgoing, venturesome, confident, approachable and sociable people
who readily form new interests and attachments

Theories of personality
--> Eysenck indicated the existence of extraversion (E), neuroticism (N) and later psychoticism (P) as the three
major and mutually independent personality factors.
--> Eysenck Personality Inventory – measured extraversion, introversion and neuroticism.
--> Eysenck’s extraverts are considered to be fond of activities, outgoing, communicative, optimistic and easy-going
-->Introverts are persistent, rigid and shy.
--> Neurotics, on the other hand, are characterized by depression, low self-esteem, fear, anxiety and tenseness.

Trait theories of personality

--> Trait theories - theories that endeavor to describe the characteristics that make up human personality in an effort
to predict future behavior.
~ Trait - a consistent, enduring way of thinking, feeling, or behaving.
--> Allport first developed a list of about 200 traits and believed that these traits were part of the nervous system.
--> Cattell reduced the number of traits to between 16 and 23 with a computer method called factor analysis.

Theories of personality
--> Raymond Cattell distinguishes between what he calls source traits, which are at the root of observed behaviour,
and surface traits, which are the superficial and detectable patterns of behaviour having their origins in source traits
--> In the 1940s, Cattell developed a 16-item inventory of personality traits and created the Sixteen Personality
Factor Questionnaire (16PF) instrument to measure these traits. Robert McCrae and Paul Costa later developed the
Five- Factor Model (FFM), which describes personality in terms of five broad factors. The five dimensions were
derived from the analyses of the language people use to describe themselves and others.

Theories of personality
--> Openness to experience
--> Conscientiousness
--> Extraversion/introversion
--> Agreeableness
--> Neuroticism
--> The Big Five is commonly accepted by the psychologists and researches and they generally agree on the meaning
of each of the dimensions
Personality and second language acqusition
--> Personality factors influencing L2 learning
--> extraversion/introversion
--> anxiety
--> self-esteem
--> inhibition
--> risk-taking
--> empathy

Personality and second language acqusition

-->Extraversion/introversion
--> extraverts are risk-taking and outgoing while introverts are quiet and prefer working alone.
--> extravert learners are better at acquiring basic interpersonal communication skills
--> introverts will do better developing cognitive, academic, and language proficiency
--> extraversion appears to be an advantage; the second hypothesis has not gained much support from the
researchers.
--> extraverts are more involved in talking than introverts
--> oral fluency has significant relationship with introversion-extraversion

Personality and second language acqusition

--> Anxiety
--> Anxiety is associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension or worry.
--> Anxiety has been divided into three components
--> communication apprehension
--> fear of negative social evaluation
--> test anxiety
--> anxiety can have a positive effect
--> Two types: debilitative, that is harmful anxiety and facilitative, that is helpful anxiety
--> a dose of tension and nervousness have a positive influence on the learner and keep him or her focused and
alert, and therefore, open to the learning process
Personality and second language acqusition
--> Self-esteem
-->Self-esteem is based on self-confidence and acceptance of the self. It is the extent to which individuals feel
significant and capable of performing certain tasks
--> the division of self-esteem into global (general), situational (specific) and task-oriented

Personality and second language acqusition

--> Inhibition
--> Inhibition is the extent to which individuals build defenses to protect their egos.
--> people with low self-esteem are more inhibited than those with high self-esteem. Therefore, they are less
confident in performing a task.
--> one of the productive ways to learn a language is to make mistakes; by errors it is easier both for adults learning a
second language and children learning their mother tongue to communicate productively
--> mistakes can be threatening for the ego as the learner can become very critical towards himself or herself

Personality and second language acqusition

--> Risk-taking
--> Risk-taking is perceived as a factor that can promote success in learning a second language
--> Risk-takers are said to be less hesitant, they are not afraid of using complex language and are more eager to
participate in activities. They keep on trying, and therefore, get more practice and often learn more
--> Risk-taking, however, has also a negative aspect: risk-takers are exposed to some failure such as bad grades,
other students’ smirks and embarrassment. Most students do not want to feel ridiculous. They do not want to lose
their faces and appear silly in front of other people

Personality and second language acqusition

--> Empathy
--> Empathy is the process of putting yourself into someone else’s shoes, of reaching beyond the self to understand
what another person is feeling, (...) the projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to
understand him or her better.
--> In order to empathize, a person must know himself or herself and his or her own feelings. Knowing another
person, that is his or her affective states, is the condition of the successful communication
--> The study of Guiora (1967 in Brown: 2000, p.154) showed that there is a positive correlation between empathy
and oral proficiency.
--> Empathy should be considered among different cultures as it can be expressed differently in different countries.