Impacts Of Personality Traits On L2 Learner's Reading Behaviors: Strategy Preference And Operating Features

This study investigated the relationship between individuals' personality features and their typical performance, reactions, choice of strategies and preferred reading materials in L2 reading process, all of which were covered by a general term—L2 reading behaviors sometimes in the paper for the sake of descriptive convenience. It is commonly accepted that whatever an individual does, thinks and believes, his/her actions and outcomes are always symbolized by his/her inherent nature—particular construction of the personality traits, which is built as a result of reinforcement by both one's inborn temperament and outside exposures, including the parents' influence, educational background, living environment and individual experience and so on. The personality features, once formed stably, endures in one's whole life and underpins human beings' style of behaving. Bulks of studies have been done to investigate how the personality traits impact an individual's acts in general learning process while few of them set the specific learning behavior, such as learning of L2 reading, as the topic of focus. The current study supplied the gap by surveying the L2 readers' personality traits with MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) test and their behaviors in learning and performing L2 reading. The subjects are 72 Chinese university students who take English as the second language including both English majors and non-English majors. The results showed that there are significant relationship between certain MBTI personality trait and the L2 readers' particular reading behaviors, including reading strategy choices and preference of reading materials. For example, the dimensions of extravert, introvert and thinking strongly correlated with the use of cognitive strategies in L2 reading. Extravert learners feel comfortable by exchanging ideas with others while introvert ones not. Readers of sensing type always focus on and trust the data and evidence in the text while intuitive readers establish their own views first and refer to the passage to testify their assumptions. Further more, the study also took gender and English learning background into consideration and reported some difference among the different groups of reading learners in L2 reading process. The findings of the study are of particular importance to teachers delivering L2 reading instruction. Bearing the learners' personality characteristics in mind, teachers are able to understand the learners' distinctive features of reading behaviors and provide constructive guidance both toward the aim of the learning task and fit for reading learner's personal appetite.