Relationship of Personality Types and Strategy Choices in Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

Language learning is a comprehensive concept with its components and needs. Because of this reason, it is affected by various subjects, most significant two of which are learner personality and language learning strategy choices of the students. By taking into consideration the importance of these factors in language education, the main aim of this study is to find out the relationship of students’ personality types and their language learning strategy choices by also taking into account their language levels to provide information for syllabus designers and language teachers. In order to do this, a survey design method was supported with Myers and Briggs Personality Test and Oxford’s SILL (Strategy Inventory for Language Learning), and 68 randomly selected students participated in this study. After analyzing the data with SPSS 23.0, it was found out that there is no significant statistical relationship between strategy choices and personality types. On the other hand, participants of this study showed different characteristics (most of them have ESTJ (extravert, sensing, thinking, judging) and they also desired to use different learning strategies, most used of which are compensation, memory, and social strategies. The study is crucial as it revealed that students could have different characteristics and learning strategies and these differences should be taken into consideration while planning a language course.

Keywords

• personality types
• sill
• learning strategy
• myers and briggs