Students’ Personality Traits and Language Learning Strategies in English

The study looked into the concept of personality traits and choice of language learning strategies as major influences in the success of learning a second language. More specifically, it investigated university students’ personality traits and language learning strategies towards learning English language. A total of 230 college students took part in this research study. The measuring instruments used were the Manchester Personality Questionnaire Version 14 (MPQ) and for the English learning strategies, the Strategies Inventory of Language Learning (SILL) for Second Language (SL) designed by Rebecca Oxford was used. The collected data were computed and analyzed via descriptive statistics, and Kendall’s Tau-C. The findings of the study were generalized as follows: (1) the first result of the study is that out of the fourteen personality scales, communicativeness and independence had similar and the highest mean scores (2) the most preferred language learning strategies of the respondents was social strategies (3) when grouped according to curricular levels, 1 st year and 4 th year students’ dominant personality trait was Independence; 2 nd year and 3 rd year students was Communicativeness (4) 1 st year students preferred memory strategies; 2 nd year and 3 rd year students preferred social strategies while 4 th year students preferred affective strategies when grouped according to curricular levels (5) There is a significant relationship between the predominant personality trait and language learning strategies of the respondents. In conclusion, the need to identify students’ personality traits and language learning strategies as basis for providing responsive instruction to the needs of the learners is important.