The Relationship between self -confidence, Personality Type and Reading Comprehension of Iranian English language Students
Department of English language Teaching, Islamic Azad university, Ilam branch,,iran
Corresponding auther: YasinNurianfar
Abstract
This study aimed at investigating the relationship between self-confidence,personality type and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. Data of this study were collected by administering a questionnaire of self-confidence including three sections: global self-confidence, situational self-confidence and task self-confidence, questionnaire of personality type measuring extroversion and TOEFL reading comprehension test that were prepared by the researcher. The relevance of the ability to comprehend texts, the researcher’s experience and other views on the causes of the problem as well as the solutions initiated the researcher to figure out factors that affect students’ reading comprehension ability. Two of the most examined dimensions of personality that have an affective influence onlanguage learning are extroverted and introverted .The instruments were administered to a random sample from English Institutes. The sample consisted of 60 students (25male). Pearson Coefficient-Moment Product Correlation was used to determine the relationship between variables. Results of the study revealed that there was a positive relationship between overall self-confidence and reading comprehension, and overall self-confidence and personality type, in general. Likewise, positive relationships between situational and task self-confidence with reading comprehension were shown but there wasn't a significant relationship between global self-confidence and reading comprehension. Also the relationship between personality type and reading comprehension was insignificant.
Key words:personality type, self- confidence, reading comprehension, relationship
I. INTRODUCTION
Reading comprehension is the process of meaning construction as a result of blending contentand message of the text with the readers existing knowledge and skills during reader text interaction (Pardo, (2004). Reading is a very complex process that requires many different skills. Hancock (1998) believes that in reading, “comprehension involves understanding the vocabulary, seeing relationships among words and concepts, organizing ideas, recognizing the author’s purpose, evaluating the context, and making judgments” (p. 69). The aim of this book is to identify the relationship between personality types of intermediate EFL students and their learning styles. The total population of the study is composed of 60 EFL students from a high school in, Iran .The source of the relationship between personality and learning styles is based on the Theory of Personality Types Carl Jung (1927) (Ekici, 2013).Personality typing is a tool with many uses. It's especially notable for its helpfulness in the areas of growth and self-development. Learning and applying the theories of personality type can be a powerful and rewarding experience, if it is used as a tool for discovery, rather than as a method for putting people into boxes, or as an excuse for behavior. Personality is defined as an inborn temperament and features arising in different situations and a combination of the characteristics of a person which separate him/her from other people. According to another definition, personality is the unique features of every human being; exhibition of characteristic adaptations; unique identifications towards life and a set of cultural differences (McAdams & Pals, 2006). In the following section, fundamental differences between extroverts and introverts and the related studies done will be discussed. as follows: extroversion/introversion, types of comprehension, studies on extraversion/introversion in L2 learning, personality traits, introverts and extroverts related attitudes, introversion-extroversion and reading and listening comprehension, and personality and reading comprehension. Nowadays, learning English has become a necessity all over the world. English is the most common language in the world. Learning English requires mastering of the four language skills listening, speaking, reading and writing. Reading is the most important academic skill. In spite of this crucial role of reading, many students still have problems concerning reading. This seems true even if the learners have a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge. Therefore, it can be suggested that there are some non-linguistic factors in the process of reading comprehension. Anders (2002) claims that language learning is affected by both domains which are the mental and emotional sides of human behavior.Two important factors that affect the process of reading and consequently the process of comprehension are the reader variable and the text variable. Reader variables are the strategies used by readers, their background knowledge, motivation, personality, self-confidence and sex. In recent years, the importance of these factors has been of interest in the field of language learning because of their high effects on learning a foreign or a second language (Anders, 2002).
One of the important reader's variable is personality. In modern language teaching today, relating individually with the students on academic basis and trying to learn more about the student profile provides further advantages for the language learner and the teacher to meet the program goals and objectives. Here, the personality of the student appears to be in the core of the issue. Much research regarding reading has been concerned with the attempt to identify individual differences (ID) as source of large variances typically obtained in measures of reading comprehension. The major IDs have tended to be cognitive like intelligence or achievement like GPA.
The role of personality has been much less a concern of researchers (Farely, 1970). Schmeck (1988)makes it clear that is important and useful to identify ''educationally relevant personal attributes,'' but researchers seem to be doing less and less in this area. For example, the yearly IRA Annual Summary of Investigations Relating to Reading annually includes up to 800 studies, but over the past five years has listed fewer than a dozen studies on the relationship of personal variables and reading comprehension (Weintraub, 1992).
People differ from one another depending on their personalities. Wilz (2000) expresses the need for personality type understanding on the part of the teacher: ''An awareness of student personality types allows teachers to have a better understanding of the classroom dynamics and to be better able to determine what kinds of classroom activities and strategies would be most effective with a majority of students in the class'' (p, 29). Experts think that an understanding of personality types can help teachers explain why students approach tasks differently. Some of them succeed whilesome fail (Oxford&Ehrman, 1990; Wilz 2000). In research, extroversion appears to receive great attention by scholars to study among other traits in personality (Davies, 2004).
Personality and Reading Comprehension
All those who are involved in the field of language teaching, whether they are working on reading or any other skills, have one purpose in mind and that is to ease the process of teaching for themselves and learning for learners. Therefore, teachers’ knowledge in the last few years towards the importance of knowing more about learners’ differences, characteristics, personality types, and psychological effects has been increased. Learner factors namely age, aptitude, attitude, motivation, personality, cognitive styles, and preferred learning strategies must be taken into consideration in any comprehensive theory at L2 acquisition (Hadley, 2003). Therefore, a person may have different personality type; however, regarding what type of personality type best suit them in that very case of learning, they decide to utilize the best one through modifying the most appropriate one. Hence, in order to facilitate learning through the use of certain strategies, more effective ones should be modified (Hedge, 2008).
Reading comprehension is defined as the process of unlocking meaning from connected text. Up to now, reading comprehension as a great source of knowledge has been one of the important parts in second/foreign language testsand examinations; it plays a basic role in the educational and professional life of many students. The fact that each learner has his/her own performance in language skills induced Niaman (1978) and other researchers to focus on the concept “Good Language Learner” (GLL) to reveal learner characteristics contributing to successful language learning. Accordingly, and based on the fact that reading is integral to learning, it seems logical if someone thinks of the concepts “Good and Poor Readers” and the reasons why some readers outperform others as good readers?
The literature shows that personality is related to learning styles and learning is often contingent upon reading skills. Consequently, it is reasonable if someone presumes a relationship between personality and reading comprehension(Gray, 1999). On the other hand, most learners contribute their failure in reading tests to the complexity of readingcomprehension text, while, some reasons root in affective variables among which personality is of the great importance. The fact that there is a relation between personality and reading comprehension has been verified in a few researches.
Millot and Cranney (1976) in a study on relationship between personality type and learning style in reading comprehension found a significant link between personality types of introversion, intuition and perceiving and learning style. Brown (1973) poses that maybe a relationship could be found between extraversion and reading comprehension. On contrary, Busch (1982) on a study using Eysenck Personality Inventory found a significant relationship between subjects’ introversion personality type preference and their reading performance. Another study(Grey, 1999) was done on 400 college-bound students in the United States to detect possible reading comprehension skill problems in relation with affective learning style, determined by personality. The results showed a significant difference in the mastery level of seven out of thirteen reading comprehension skills, based upon personality type
preferences, i.e. intuition and thinking. In the above study, MBTI personality model was used to determine the participant's type of personality. Also, Pfister (2000) investigated the effect of personality type on English reading comprehension among college bilingual students in the United States; similar to the previous study, the researcher (pfister, 2000) employed MBTImodel of personality as the research measuring instrument. The results demonstrated that students with EP(extroversion, perceiving) type got better scores on interpretive comprehension items while students with SF(sensing, feeling) type got better scores on literal comprehension items. Generally, In Faster's research extroverted students outperformed introverted ones in reading tests. To summarize, the dominant role of personality as an affective learning style on reading performance can be inferred from the above reviewed studies. However, the results are not as comprehensive and congruent as they are supposed to be, i.e.
one cannot conclude which type(s) of personality contribute more to reading comprehension. In spite of this incongruity in research outcomes, no one can ignore the fact that predicting students’ performance in reading comprehension and detecting their reading disabilities, dominant affective variables like personality should be taken into serious consideration alongside the other cognitive and non-cognitive variables. Therefore, more empirical studies to find more conclusive results in personality and reading comprehension research is still of the great need and interest. Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the text/message. In the current thesis, attempts were made to show the discussed for final decisions. Effectiveness of personality type activities strategy on the improvement of Iranian EFL learners. The data were collected statistically according to various tables shown in the current study .However, to be more attentive, the results relevant to the present work will be discussed in details in the coming chapter .Meanwhile, the design and suggestions will also be discussed.
Similar results yielded in the area of writing (Frankburger, 1991; Grodnick, 1996; Cronwell & Mackay, 1999; Hassan, 2001) indicated that self-confidence can affect writing success. In addition, other studies (Hutchison, 1972; Sweet, 1977; Richardson, 2003) indicated that self-confidence can affect reading. Throughout the above mentioned studies, it is found that most of those studies focus on the relationship between self-confidence and reading more than its relationship to personality. Little attention has been paid to the association of self-confidence, personality and reading comprehension. Consequently, the present study tries to investigate the relationship between self-confidence, personality and reading comprehension among Iranian EFL students:
Due to the aforementioned discussion, these null hypotheses are posed
1.There is no significant relationship between overall self-confidence and reading comprehension1.There is no significant relationship between global self-confidence and reading comprehension
2.There is no significant relationship between situational self-confidence and reading comprehension
3.There is no significant relationship between task self-confidence and reading comprehension
There is no significant relationship between extroversion and reading comprehension.4
. LITERATURE REVIEW
Reading comprehension is the process of meaning construction as a result of blending contentand message of the text with the readers existing knowledge and skills during reader text interaction (Pardo, (2004). Reading is a very complex process that requires many different skills. Hancock (1998) believes that in reading, “comprehension involves understanding the vocabulary, seeing relationships among words and concepts, organizing ideas, recognizing the author’s purpose, evaluating the context, and making judgments” (p. 69). The aim of this study is to identify the relationship between personality types of intermediate EFL students and their learning styles. The total population of the study is composed of 60 EFL students from a high school in Iran. The source of the relationship between personality and learning styles is based on the Theory of Personality Types Carl Jung (1927) (Ekici, 2013).Personality typing is a tool with many uses. It's especially notable for its helpfulness in the areas of growth and self-development. Learning and applying the theories of personality type can be a powerful and rewarding experience, if it is used as a tool for discovery, rather than as a method for putting people into boxes, or as an excuse for behavior. Personality is defined as an inborn temperament and features arising in different situations and a combination of the characteristics of a person which separate him/her from other people. According to another definition, personality is the unique features of every human being; exhibition of characteristic adaptations; unique identifications towards life and a set of cultural differences (McAdams & Pals, 2006). In the following section, fundamental differences between extroverts and introverts and the related studies done will be discussed. as follows: extroversion/introversion,types of comprehension, studies on extraversion/introversion in L2 learning, personality traits, introverts and extroverts related attitudes, introversion-extroversion and reading and listening comprehension, and personality and reading comprehension. The researcher collected data throughEysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) and transcript scores of students. The results showed that there was a positive relation between extroversion and writing skill.
. METHOD
A. Participants
The participants were randomly selected from male students enrolled in English institutes. All students were adults. Participants consisted of 60 students studying in advance levels. Advanced students were selected so that they could answer TOEFL reading comprehension tests.
B. Materials
To investigate the relationship between self-confidence and personality on reading comprehension test three instruments are used. The first one is questionnaire of self-confidence (QSE) by Hyde (1979) and the second one is short form revised Eysenek personality questionnaire (EPQ-S) by Eysenek (1985) and the third one is TOEFL reading comprehension test. Reliability and validity of them were checked. Due to the fact that TOEFL is a standard test its reliability and validity are assumed to be satisfactory. Since only reading comprehension of TOEFL was administered to the students, reliability and validity of the test were checked. Cronbach alpha of .890 was obtained. Since it measured one construct, it was a valid test. The reliability and validity of QSE were checked. To determine the reliability of the QSE, the Spilt-half Method was used. The questionnaire was divided into odd and even numbers, thirty items each. Then the Correlation between the two parts was computed using Spearman-Brown Formula. Results are shown in the table 1.
Spearman's correlation / mean / s.d / item900 / 300 / 500 / odd
3.9 / 4.1 / event
The correlation between the two halves of the QSE was.900, it was statistically significant at the level of 0.01. Based on these results, the QSE is reliable. Intrinsic validity was obtained by applying the following formula: Intrinsic validity = ã Reliability item Intrinsic validity of the QSE = ã .900=9.24
The intrinsic validity was .948. Based on this result, the QSE is a valid tool. The reliability and validity of EPQ-S were checked. In this study Cranach alpha of .623 was calculated. This result showed that it has internal consistency. To ensure the content validity of the test, the committee members' advice was sought. Each strongly confirmed the appropriateness of the test.
C. Procedure:
The questionnaires were pilot tested by being administered to 20 subjects whose
Characteristics were judged to be the same as those of the target group. Sampling procedure wasa purposive sampling design in which the participants were selected from their naturally formedclasses, and were given time during the last or first 20 minutes of their reading classes to answerthe questionnaires. Subjects provided their demographic information like age, sex, and majorbefore filling out the MBTI. Then, explanations about Reading Strategy Inventory were providedto turn subjects’ attentions to the reading process and their likely strategies. According to Bakerand Boonkit (2004), since questionnaires collect data away from the real learning context, responses are limited to the questionnaire designer preferences and no elaboration or explanationon choices can be elicited. Therefore, as assessing and analyzing reading strategies accumulatedmerely through questionnaires is not that valid, we also conducted some interviews along withthe questionnaire. 16 student volunteers were randomly selected to participate in the 8-12 minuteinterview sessions. The participants were assured that their responses would be kept confidential and would not affect their marks. The researcher also made the students aware of the fact that that their participation would help all Iranian learners to learn English more efficiently. In short, all required information was given to the participants before administering the instruments, information like how to answer the questions and the test