Personality Preferences and Foreign Language Learning

The faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa has decided to require one year of a foreign language for all students beginning in 1988. Those entering in 1989 will be required to complete two years before graduation. "All students" includes not only those of arts and sciences but also those of the professional schools, including business, education, engineering, nursing, social work, and tropical agriculture. None of these professional schools has ever required a foreign language. This paper reports a preliminary analysis of data aimed at finding out what new learning and teaching strategies these new students will require. The primary focus is on personality, the characteristic ways in which people respond to the world and the ways they prefer to learn. Although some relationships between personality and language learning have been explored, apparently no previous study has sought to compare the approaches of language learners with those of other disciplines. The effect of personality on language learning has been studied a number of times.2 For example, Rossier found a positive correlation between extraversion and oral fluency in English. Outgoing people get higher ratings. Such announcements, while interesting, do not tell the teacher who stands in front of a classroom

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