Abstract:
The aim of the study was to investigate students' personality types, their achievement and teachers'
approaches in English language classroom at Wombera Preparatory School. Grade 11 students'
dominant personality types were identified based on the five factor personality traits: Extraversion,
Neuroticism. Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness to experiences. The relationship between
the identified variables and achievement in English language learning was estimated. Teachers' effort to
accommodate diversity of personalities was observed. The students' personality types mentioned were
identified as background data using Amharic version of the five factor personality inventory instrument
developed by Buchannan, et al. (2005). The instrument is a 5- point Likert scale self-report questionnaire.
It has 50 items distributed equally for the five personality factors. Random sampling technique was
employed to take samples from students. Available sampling was used for teachers. Out of 304 total
population (159 male and 145 female students), I 2Q (39. 5%) sample was taken by lottery method and
three teachers were included. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. Descriptive statistics such
as mean and standard deviation were used to describe the respondents ' dominant personality types.
Repeated measure of ANOVA was used to test significant difference among means. Subsequently, (i)
Pearson correlation was calculated to measure the strength and direction of relationships between the
identified variables and achievement, (ii) multiple regression was applied to check how much each
variable affect achievement independently and in combination. Then, teachers' approaches were
analyzed qualitatively in paragraphs using data from interview and observation. The results of the study
show that Openness to experiences; Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Extraversion were dominant
personality types of students; Openness to experiences was the, only predictor of academic achievement,
and there ·were gaps between students' needs and teachers' approaches in language learning. The
students posses dispositions that are opportunity for teachers to mediate between tasks and students.
Focusing on facets underlying Openness to experiences may be possible approaches to research in the
domain of personality types and language learning. Teachers were recommended to find wcrys of
balancing students' needs particularly adopting means of implementing cooperative group learning, and
providing research based instructions. Finally, future research should combine Openness to experiences
and language learning strategies focusing on their matches and their predictability of achievement.
