PERSONALITY FACTORS

EXTROVERTED PERSON VS INTROVERTED PERSON. SELF-ESTEEM. INHIBITIONS.

Extroverts and introverts  An extrovert: is outgoing, interested, social and seeking excitement.  An introvert: is more reserved, less outgoing, less social.

It is assumed that an extroverted person is better in language learning. However, some researches found that in some learning situations the quite observant learner may have greater success.

Self- esteem It is self-confidence, knowledge of oneself, and reflections of self as seen from interactions with others. People derive self-esteem from the accumulation of experiences with themselves and others and the world around them.

Global self-esteem. It is stable The general assessment one makes of one’s own worth over time and across a number of situations.

Situational or specific self-esteem. One’s self- assessment in particular life situations, such as social interaction, work, etc. It is not stable and varies according to the situation.

Task self-esteem it is related to a particular tasks within specific situations. For exmaple, in educational setting, task self-esteem may refer to specific subject matter (e.g. being good in writing essays.)

Which affect which ? Self-esteem language success

inhibitions  They are defined as built-in defences to protect the ego.  The process of defences to protect the ego start at adolescence and continue to adulthood.  People with high self-esteem have ego strength and lower inhibitions and vice versa.

Inhibitions and ego Language ego: an identity a person develops in reference to the language he/she speaks. Second language learning requires that learners take on a new identity with the new acquired competence. Therefore, learners need to have a flexible language ego in order to lower inhibitions that may block language learning because it is considered as a threat to the ego.

REFLECTING ON PERSONALITY RESEARCH Research in this area found mixed and sometimes conflicting results. Why? The major difficulty in studying personality factors is the identification and measurement of the factors. Personality factors affect only acquisition of conversational skills not academic skills. Some studies focused on measuring the communicative ability and some measure the grammatical ability.