Chinese EFL Undergraduate Learners’ Personality Traits And Their Foreign Language Learning Styles

In recent thirty years, the study on students’personality types and learning styles during their foreign language learning process has drawn scholars’ wide concern. Studies abroad are dominantly guided by psychology and ethology. Instrument used in these studies is mainly Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which is based on psychology. Most domestic studies in this field focus on the relationship between learning styles and teaching strategies, the relationship between learning styles and students’ achievements and the choice of learning styles and learning strategies. In the existing literature in China, there are few studies concerning the relationship between students’personality traits and their foreign language learning styles. Taking110first-year college students of non-English major from Chengdu University of Information Technology (CUIT) as the subjects of the study, the thesis investigated the relationship between Chinese EFL undergraduate learners’ personality traits and their foreign language learning style preferences. The study aims to (1) identify their predominant personality types and learning styles;(2) investigate the relationship between the participants’ personality classifications and their learning styles;(3) look into how the participants’personality variables affect their foreign language learning style choice and (4) find out whether different personality types may affect the way students establish their learning styles while learning English as a foreign language.The instruments employed in the study were two complicated questionnaires. One of the questionnaires is the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) revised by Costa and McCrae (2004) with60randomly arranged items to elicit respondents’personality traits among five categories:neuroticism (N), extraversion (E), openness to experience (O), agreeableness (A) and conscientiousness (C). The other questionnaire is Reid’s Perceptual Learning Styles Preference questionnaire (PLSP)(2002) which consists of30items to investigate EFL learners’learning style preferences among six categories:visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, group, and individual.The study found that:(1) The predominant personality types of the subjects were agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness. The subjects’dominating learning styles were kinesthetic and tactile learning styles.(2) There was no evident difference of personality traits and learning styles between the students majoring in arts and those of science and technology.(3) There was no clear difference of personality traits between male and female students. As for learning style choices, the vast majority of the male and female college students investigated preferred kinesthetic learning style. Meanwhile, male students also preferred individual and group learning styles and female students also preferred tactile and auditory learning styles.(4) There was a meaningful relationship between personality traits and learning style choices among low achievers and high achievers. As for low achievers, the neurotic students favored tactile and individual learning styles; the extraverted students preferred kinesthetic and tactile learning styles; Individual learning style was preferred by the open students, and the conscientious students favored kinesthetic learning style. In terms of high achievers, the extraverted students preferred kinesthetic and group learning styles; and the conscientious students favored tactile and group learning styles.(5) The main personality factors that may affect students’ language learning styles were neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness.The study has enriched the content of domestic research on college EFL learners’ learning styles. It may also offer the explanatory power of Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory in analyzing the relationship between Chinese EFL students’ personality traits and their learning styles. The author hopes that this research can provide some references to other related studies in this field.