EFL students’ Divergence from L1 Norms, and Convergence on L2 Norms in terms of their Multicultural Personality Traits

The present study explored the impact of EFL learning on Iranian MA EFL students’ Multicultural Personality Traits (MPTs) development. Divergence from L1 norms, and convergence on L2 norms were investigated by means of utilizing Multicultural Personality Questionnaire that measures cultural empathy, open-mindedness, social initiative, emotional stability, and flexibility. Thirty native speakers of English, 92 Iranian MA EFL, and 80 MA Persian language students participated in this study. MPTs of monolingual Persian language students and English language native students were used as reference for L1 and L2 norms. The findings revealed that Iranian MA EFL students, compared with their monolingual Persian language counterparts, had developed significantly greater MPTs and drawn closer to their L2 norms than Persian language students. The findings supported the idea that L2 learning and some cultural acquisitions are collateral and the bilinguality achieved in L2 learning is always concomitant with biculturality that yields a higher degree of multiculturality in EFL students. Findings were also confirmatory of the fact that the commonality of means of communications nurtures similarity in personality features and bilinguality results in the reduction of the difference between speech communities.