An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between English Learner Personality, Learning Strategies And Learning Grades-Taking English Sophomores Of LanZhou City University As Examples

At early 1970s, more and more scholars began to do researches of EFL learner factors,such as learner personality, learning strategies and English learning achievements. Many researches so far have proved that there is correlation between learner personality and their learning strategies, learner personality and their learning achievements, learning strategies and learning achievements.Adopting the method of questionnaire investigation, taking 250 English sophomores(class1 ~ class7) of 2013 in Lanzhou City College as subjects, this study applies the Simplified Version of Eysenck Personality Questionnaire(EPQ-RSC) to measure students’ personality characteristics and Rebecca Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for their language learning strategies. Also CET4 scores of the subjects of Dec.2015 were got as index of the subjects’ English achievements. Then the relationship among learner personality, learning strategies and learners’ performance are analyzed respectively. The following conclusions are drawn:(1)150 of the whole 248 valid subjects are in extrovert type and others are in introvert type based on EPQ-RCS test. Also, of the 248 valid subjects, 139 belong to instability group while 109 belong to stability group.(2)Generally speaking, the subjects use learning strategies only sometimes with the average value around 3.0, of which Compensation strategies are used most frequently﹙ average value 3.205 ﹚; Meta cognition the least(average value, 3.005). Extrovert students have higher frequency than the introvert students in using all six types of learning strategies, i.e.., memory strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies,metacognitive strategies and affective strategies. The differences between the usage of memory strategies and social strategies have significant meaning. Further more, the stable group use more frequently of all the six types of learning strategies except social strategy than the unstable group. Thus, it’s sure that there exists the correlation between learner personality and learning strategies. Besides, the average CET4 test scores of the extrovert are slightly higher than that of the introvert and the mean of CET4 of stable group is higher than that of the unstable group. There exits the relationship between learner personality and learning grades to some degree.(3)The subjects of high scores use more frequently of the cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies than students of lower scores.(4)In this study, students’ personality, their choice of learning strategies andscores of different parts of CET4, i.e. listening, reading, writing, and translation does not show a significant difference.The result shows that the relationship between learner personality and learning grades does exit. The proper use of learning strategies can help learners improve learning level and the learning efficiency.