A Correlation Study Of Personality Types And English Writing Strategies For English Majors

Learning style and learning strategy, as two important factors of individual differences have been the focus of language researchers since 1970s. As for the questions that whether there are significant correlations between personality types and writing strategies or what kind of relationship there is between personality types and writing strategies, different scholars have different conclusions. Based on Carrell's and others'previous studies as well as Curry's"Onion Model", present study aims to investigate the relationship between personality types and writing strategies for English majors in the Chinese EFL context.This thesis consists of six parts: Part One is a brief introduction of the background of this study. Part Two is literature review which lays the theoretical foundation for this essay. Part Three presents the methodology of this study. The subjects comprise of 145 English majors from Wuhan University of Science and Technology. Two self-reported inventories:the Chinese version of MBTI-M and a questionnaire on the use of writing strategies adapted from Oxford's classification system, were used to examine the students'personality types and writing strategies respectively. Part Four demonstrates the major findings of personality types and writing strategy of the study. Part Five is the pedagogical Implications, and Part Six is concerned with the conclusion and limitations of the study. After analyzing the data with the aid of SPSS, the following conclusions have been drawn: (1) Chinese English majors show a variety of personality type preferences. (2) Chinese English majors employ various strategies to accomplish their writing tasks with memory strategies and compensation strategies used most and affective strategies used least. (3) Personality types are correlated with writing strategies. Extroversion/ Introversion and Judging/Perceiving dimension correlate with all the six sets of writing strategies. Extroversion/ Introversion dimension is associated positively with cognitive strategy, compensation strategy, metacognitive strategy, affective strategy, and social strategy. It is negatively associated with cognitive strategy and affective strategy. Judging/feeling dimension is correlated with cognitive strategies.