| In the past several decades, researchers and educators have adopted a number of researches on learning strategies, and many factors are found to influence the choice of language learning strategies, such as motivation, aptitude and personality, etc. As an important factor affecting language learning, personality has obtained due attention.However, the results of the correlation between personality and English learning proficiency are not conclusive. Besides, the limited results of the relationship between personality types and employment of learning strategy cannot show clearly the influence of personality types on the choice of learning strategies. Thus, the present study aims to study the influence of personality(in terms of introversion and extroversion) on learners’ oral English proficiency and their use of oral English learning strategies, and the relationship between them.Based on Eysenck Personality Theory and Oxford Language Learning Strategy Theory,the present study adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the personality types, oral English proficiency, and the employment of oral English learning strategies of 167 freshmen and sophomores of non-English majors in Xi’an Polytechnic University. Firstly, subjects’ oral English proficiency is evaluated by the researcher and their teachers through the oral English proficiency test. Then, the researcher makes an investigation on subjects’ personality types through the personality questionnaire, and determines 49 learners with obvious tendency of extroversion and 37 learners with that of introversion. Next, the subjects with obvious personality tendency are selected for the investigation of oral English learning strategies by the strategy questionnaire devised from Oxford’s(1990) SILL and the interview. Finally, the researcher uses the authorized software Excel 2003 and SPSS 16.0 to analyze the collected data.The results of the analysis indicate that the extroverted learners and the introverted ones are significantly different in their oral English achievements, and personality types(introversion/extroversion) are positively correlated with oral English proficiency, which means that personality has certain influence on oral English learning, and the oral English proficiency of the extroverts is generally higher than that of the introverts. As for the employment of strategies, introverted learners and extroverted ones are significantly differentfrom each other not only in the overall employment of the oral English learning strategies,but also in the use of five strategy categories and ten specific strategies, in which the five strategy categories include the categories of meta-cognitive strategy, functional practice strategy, memory strategy, affective strategy and social strategy, and the ten specific strategies include three meta-cognitive strategies, two memory strategies, two compensation strategies, two social strategies and a affective strategy. All these differences demonstrate that the average frequency of use of oral English learning strategies of the extroverts is higher than that of the introverts. Moreover, by making a comparison of the use of oral English learning strategies between the good learners and the poor learners among the introverts and the extroverts respectively, it is found that both of the good introverted learners and the good extroverted ones do better in the overall use of oral English learning strategies and each of the strategy categories than the poor ones of the same personality type.For the specific strategies, differences between good introverted learners and poor introverted ones in twelve specific strategies are statistically significant, while the use of ten specific strategies are significantly different between the good extroverted learners and the poor extroverted ones. According to the research results, the researcher puts forward some implications for oral English teaching and learning and proposes some suggestions for further researches. |
