Table Of ContentSecond Language Learning and Teaching
Ewa Piechurska-Kuciel
The Big
Five in SLA
Second Language Learning and Teaching
Series Editor
Mirosław Pawlak, Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts, Adam Mickiewicz
University, Kalisz, Poland
The series brings together volumes dealing with different aspects of learning and
teaching second and foreign languages. The titles included are both monographs
and edited collections focusing on a variety of topics ranging from the processes
underlying second language acquisition, through various aspects of language
learningininstructedandnon-instructedsettings,todifferentfacetsoftheteaching
process, including syllabus choice, materials design, classroom practices and
evaluation. The publications reflect state-of-the-art developments in those areas,
they adopt a wide range of theoretical perspectives and follow diverse research
paradigms. The intended audience are all those who are interested in naturalistic
and classroom second languageacquisition, including researchers, methodologists,
curriculum and materials designers, teachers and undergraduate and graduate
students undertaking empirical investigations of how second languages are learnt
and taught.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10129
Ewa Piechurska-Kuciel
The Big Five in SLA
123
EwaPiechurska-Kuciel
Institute of Linguistics
OpoleUniversity
Opole, Opolskie, Poland
ISSN 2193-7648 ISSN 2193-7656 (electronic)
Second LanguageLearningandTeaching
ISBN978-3-030-59323-0 ISBN978-3-030-59324-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59324-7
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Acknowledgements
Iwouldliketothankmyreviewers,Prof.HannaKomorowskaandProf.Katarzyna
Ożańska-Ponikwia, for their insightful criticism and valuable suggestions.
v
Introduction
The study of personality is a fascinating field, though very hard to grasp by
someonewithoutapsychologicalbackground.Nevertheless,personalitypertainsto
everyhumanbeing,aswellaseverywalkoflife;forthisreason,thereisapressing
need for specialists from other fields to come into grips with this specific area.
Hence,thebasicintentionofthepresentstudyistoshedsomelightontherelevance
ofpersonalityresearchinthesecondlanguageacquisition(SLA)field.Itgradually
unfoldssubsequentaspectsoftheresearchonpersonality,startingfromestablishing
a general background, which is situated in psychology. It captures the basic ter-
minology, an outline of historical advances devoted to the study of the concept,
together with a focused analysis of the undertaken empirical research devoted to
personality traits. From this foundation, the focus moves to second language
acquisition—its basic terminology, role and its approach to personality.
Specifically,thebookconsistsoffourchapters,thefirsttwoofwhicharesituated
withinthedisciplineofpsychology,whilethetwoconsecutiveones—withinSLA.
The aim of Chap. 1, entitled “Personality: Definitions, Approaches and Theories”,
is to establish a foundation for further considerations of a psychological and lin-
guistic nature. Consequently, it contains a description of the field of personality
psychology together with the key term of “personality”. Then, a summary of the
main approaches to the study of personality follows, including psychoanalytic,
learningandhumanisticperspectives.Theobjectiveofthesecondpartistopresent
anotherperspectiveinpersonality studies, whicharedividedintotwobasic trends:
typeandtraitapproaches,outlinedtogetherwithascrutinyofrespectivemeasuring
instruments. The first one, represented by ancient taxonomies, Jung’s and
Myers-Briggstypologies,focusesonqualitativedifferencesanddiscretecategories,
while the other, represented by Allport’s, Cattell’s and Eysenck’s taxonomies, on
thelatentstructureofpersonality,basedonstatisticalprocedures.Thelatterhasled
tothedevelopment ofthetraitmodeladoptedasthegroundworkofthisvolume—
the Big Five. The last section of this chapter presents a general description of the
mostimportant theories exploring thedevelopmentofpersonalityacross alifespan
(psychosexual by Freud, psychosocial by Erikson, cognitive by Piaget and social
cognitive by Selman).
vii
viii Introduction
Thenextchapter,“TheBigFiveTraitsandTheirRamifications”,focusesonthe
analysisofthetraitsandtheirconsequences, presentedfrom variousviewpoints.It
starts from a general description of the Big Five model and its theoretical justifi-
cation. First, its categories are depicted, then its theoretical foundations are
explained on the basis of the Five-Factor Theory. The recent hierarchical organi-
zation of traits is presented in the following section, allowing for establishing a
coherent personality structure. The chapter also includes a description of the most
popular instruments used in assessing personality traits. The remaining part of the
chapter is devoted to a detailed research review of each trait, in reference to its
respective higher-order meta-trait of Stability or Plasticity, as well as lower-order
phenotypicaspects.Thankstosuchanorganization,thetraitcanbecomprehended
as a unity. Then the six facets of each dimension are discussed, prompted by the
observationthatonlyadeepunderstandingofthetraitatthefacetlevelenablesone
to truly envision its specific ramifications. To bring this analysis to the fullest, the
discussion of the traits’ meaning is broadened by outlining their most common
socioaffective, cognitive and academic, as well as behavioural consequences. The
chapter finishes with a description of gender and age differences in the context of
each dimension, followed by an outline of the development of the Big Five traits
across the lifespan, due to their relevance for the personality profile of the foreign
language learner.
Chapter3,called“BigFivefromtheSLAPerspective”,aimstoassesstheroleof
personality traits in SLA. It starts with an overview of the discipline, that com-
mences with an introduction of the basic terminology related to the field, which is
relevant to the discussion of the studied issues. This is followed by a short pre-
sentation of the uniqueness of SLA when compared to other, apparently similar,
research fields or subjects. Then an outline of the typologies of individual learner
differences,amongwhichpersonalitycansometimesbefound,ispresentedinorder
todemonstratethestandingoftheanalyzedconceptinthefield.Inturn,thisleadsto
a discussion of the merit of personality research in SLA that is not free from
significant inconsistencies and limitations. The greatest part of the chapter is
devoted to theoretical propositions pertaining to the prospective research on each
BigFivetrait,resultingfromthesocioaffective,cognitiveandacademic,aswellas
behavioural ramifications of each respective trait, outlined in the previous chapter.
Theyarefollowedbyareviewoftheexisting,recentempiricalresearchfocusingon
the specific personality dimensions in the SLA literature. The basic principles
guiding the selection of the studies described herein are their relevance to the
purpose of this synopsis, as well as their relatively recent publication date.
Thelastchapter,“PersonalityStudyinSLA:FutureDirectionsandPedagogical
Implications”, is an attempt to integrate the existing theoretical and empirical
studies on personality traits in SLA in order to consider possible future research
directions related to the scrutiny of the Big Five traits. In the next step, possible
solutions to problems of a theoretical and empirical nature, connected with
conflictingresearchresultsgeneratedbypersonalitystudiesinSLA,outlinedinthe
previous chapter, are offered. So far, for the sake of simplicity and clarity, the
personality traits have been analyzed as independent entities; hence, the next
Introduction ix
subsectionisdevotedtosomeconsiderationsoftraitclustersthatmightbeusefulto
describe the ideal L2 achiever. The penultimate section contains an outline of
pedagogicalinterventionstheaimofwhichistoenhancespecificstrengthsofgiven
traits and to suppress their weaknesses, in order to gain better FL learning effects.
The final comments included in this chapter address the importance of studying
personality,bothforthepurposeofimprovingtheteachingexpertise,andcommon
well-being.
Asidefromincludingageneraloutlineonpersonalityresearch,themainfocusof
this book is the Big Five conceptualization of personality traits in the area of SLA
studies.Evenwiththisnarrowedfocus,itwasnotpossibletoincludeallsignificant
aspects of the impact of personality on the process of foreign language learning.
Among them, biological approaches to personality or the role of culture and
genetics or the links between personality and identity should be mentioned.
Unfortunately, the scope of this book prevented the inclusion of these and many
other broad topics.
This monograph has been written for those who might be interested in learning
more about human nature in the context of second language acquisition.
Specifically, this study is directed to non-psychologists, applied linguists and lan-
guage teaching specialists. It may also be of interest to advanced MA students,
novice andseasonedresearchers,aswell asteachertrainees wishingtoexplorethe
intricaciesofpersonalityinreferencetothemselves,theirstudentsortheirpersonal
study focus. Finally, this book may be of use to anyone who wants to know and
understand more about the role of personality in learning a foreign language.
Contents
Introduction... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... vii
1 Personality: Definitions, Approaches and Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Personality: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Definitions of Personality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 An Outline of Personality Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Type and Trait Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2.1 Type Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2.2 Trait Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3 Personality Across the Life Span. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2 The Big Five Traits and Their Ramifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.1 The Big Five . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.1.1 The Big Five Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.1.2 Five-Factor Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1.3 The Trait Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.1.4 The Measuring Tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2 Neuroticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2.1 The Higher and Lower Order Structure of Neuroticism . . . 37
2.2.2 Consequences of Neuroticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3 Extraversion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.3.1 Higher and Lower Order Structure of Extraversion . . . . . . 47
2.3.2 Consequences of Extraversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.4 Openness to Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4.1 Higher and Lower Order Structure of Openness
to Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4.2 Consequences of Openness to Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.5 Agreeableness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.5.1 The Higher and Lower Order Structure
of Agreeableness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2.5.2 Consequences of Agreeableness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
xi
