Personality Factors In Second Language Acquisition--Extroversion And Introversion

The development of second language acquisition firstly began in the 1950s, when Robert Lado describes a system of Contrastive Analysis (CA). In the 1960s,Chomsky argues that the process of learning can be best explained by hypothesizing a set of mental process that took place inside the mind of the learner. Later, Corder embodies the famous Error Analysis, which approachesL2 learning through a detailed analysis of the learners own speech. At the early 1970s, Larry Selinker introduces the term of Interlanguage (IL), emphasizing not just the existence of interlanguage but also where it came from. The introduction of IL indicates that SLA research has developed as an independent field of inquiry.This thesis sets out to explore the relationship between extroversion/introversion and their English performances. Extroverts are believed to achieve more than introverts. Because extroverts are more social, like meeting people, they are more active in the participation of the language learning activities, thus, they can seek more learning opportunities and have more language exposures. Yet, introverts are somewhat shy, avoid meeting people. They are more passive in the participation of the language learningactivities, thus, they lose more learning opportunities and have less language exposures. But I fail to find apparently significance between them However, as far as my research results are concerned, it is greatly interesting to find that in some cases extroversion seem positively linked with language learning success (such as, oral performances); in other cases, the more introverted learners outperformed their extroverted counterparts (such as, grammar performances).