A Study Of The Influence Of Personality And Third Factor Intervention On Language Learning Strategies

Understanding how people learn and fail to learn second and foreign languages is increasingly recognized as a crucial social and psycholinguistic issue. In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), a wide spectrum of factors has been explored to interpret the varied proficiency among different learners. Among them, personality and language learning strategies (LLS) have gained considerable currency. Meanwhile, investigations into the relationship between personality and LLS themselves have been going on in progress to date. However, personality as a broad set of traits has seldom been attributed a uniform dimension, and has resulted in various incongruous findings from different stances. Besides, almost all the related examinations traceable have treated personality in its solitary state, with third factors ignored, thus putting the research in an ideal state. Based on these considerations, this project is exploratively borne to access the relationship between personality, on the dimension of extroversion/ introversion, and LLS choice in a comprehensive approach.The focus of the project is to investigate how extroverts and introverts differ in LLS choice. To make the research more objective and theory-based, a comprehensive review on personality and LLS in SLA is outlined first, especially with an extroversion/ introversion dimension built. Then a series of statistical tests through analysis of variance (ANOVA) is run with SPSS, with all data collected based on two professional questionnaires, which were administered to sixty non-English majors from Huazhong Normal University.The result of the research indicates that the subjects generally do not apply LLS frequently, but extroverts and introverts differ in the choice of concrete LLS, especially in meta-cognitive and social strategies. Besides, it reveals that sex can also affect certain LLS choice and even interact with personality to further result in the variation of frequency of LLS use. Therefore, in line with the findings concerned, the author proposes some pedagogical implications on linking personality to LLS use, and calls attention to the third factor intervention as well.