A Correlation Study Of Personality Types, Writing Strategies And Writing Performance In The Chinese EFL Context

Based on Carrell's and others'previous studies and Curry's "Onion Model", the present study aims to investigate the relationship between personality types and writing in the Chinese EFL context. The subjects comprise of 146 non-English freshmen from two universities in Chongqing and the Chinese version of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Form G is used to assess the students'personality types. One piece of writing is collected from each participant and scored as the writing result. A writing strategy questionnaire is administered to the subjects. First, the study sets out to investigate the relationship between personality types and the Chinese EFL learners'writing performance. In accordance with Carrell's two studies and Li Jie's study, we assume that personality types exert no direct or strong effect on writing performance. Second, if personality types do not have direct effect upon the writing outcome, we hypothesize that there exists a relationship between personality types and writing strategies that play an important role in writing and through writing strategies personality types exert influence on writing performance. The third purpose of this study is to explore the writing strategies taken by the learners in their writing as answered in the questionnaire. We try to find out the connection between writing strategies and personality types so as to shed some light on EFL writing instructions. The result proves that the hypotheses are true. Then, the findings are discussed. Finally, the limitations of this study and implications from these findings are discussed and evaluated for foreign language writing practice and instruction.