The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

12-2017

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: Teaching English as a Second Language: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

Choonkyong Kim

Second Advisor

John Madden

Third Advisor

Masha Mikolchak

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

language, personality, personality test, ESL

Abstract

This study aims to create a useful tool for assessing personality in the language classroom by testing a newly created personality test and comparing it’s results to a previously used and well-known tool. Participants in this study were 51 international students enrolled in the English for Academic Purposes program at a Midwestern university. They came from various L2 backgrounds including Chinese and Nepali. The new personality testing too was created by simplifying the existing tool’s language and adding context to each question on the test, so that students are tapping into their personality as a language learner instead of their general personality traits. Students took this newly created test, named the Extroversion/Introversion in Language Learning Test (EILLT), and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) along with an oral language assessment. The researcher compared the results of the three tests looking for correlations. The study showed that the new tool was more effective at assessing personality in the language classroom because it provided statistically significant results when correlating with the language measure while the MBTI did not provide statistically significant results. It also confirmed that participants scored more introverted when they thought of their personality in the language classroom, than when they thought of their overall personality. The researcher recommends the EILLT be utilized by language teachers in the future who want to better understand their students’ personalities so as to best support their students in the classroom.

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