성격요인과 의사소통의욕의 상관성에 관한 연구

The Relationship between Five Factors of Personality and Willingness to Communicate

The major purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between the Big Five Model (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect) and willingness to communicate (WTC) in English as a foreign language among Korean high school students. This study also examined the relationships between WTC and other variables including the frequency of communication in English, preferred communication partners and contexts, and spoken English ability. The analysis of the relationship between the Big Five components and WTC revealed that personality types of extraversion and intellect were positively related to WTC, though the strength of the relationship was mediocre. It was also found that the learners with high frequency of communication in L2 had higher spoken English proficiency than those with low frequency. The results of this study suggested that extraversion and intellect as personality characteristics may have some influence on WTC, which in turn increases the frequency of communication in English. The findings of this study indicated that English teachers should be attentive to personality characteristics as powerful sources of individual differences.