THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS' READING COMPREHENSION AND THEIR PERSONALITY TRAITS: EXTROVERSION VS INTROVERSION

This study aimed to find out a conceivable answer to the question of whether personality traits i.e. extraversion vs. introversion influences reading comprehension of EFL learners. Instruments of this study were Preliminary English Test (PET), Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), and test of reading tasks (8 kinds of reading tasks, 60 items). The study was conducted on 100 undergraduate Iranian learners at Azad University of Tabriz, Iran who participated and answered a PET test. The 80 homogeneous participants who scored one standard deviation below and above the estimated mean responded to EPI. Through this questionnaire, the learners were divided into two groups of extroverts (46 learners) and introverts (34 learners). In order to have equal number of participants in each group, the researcher randomly selected 30 from each group and excluded the rest. Then both groups took the same test of reading tasks and their results were compared. Finally, to observe whether or not there were any significant differences between the two groups in terms of performing reading tasks, an independent t-test was run. The results indicated that in reading comprehension there was no significant difference between the two groups of students (introverts and extroverts).