The Effect of EFL Teachers’ Extrovert and Introvert Personality on Their Instructional Immediacy

The Language teaching is a complex processes influenced by many psychological factors such as personality traits (Tonelson, 1981) and socio-communicative styles (Thomas et al.1994). Polk (2006), argues teacher performance is influenced by the teachers’ personality. This research, too, sets out to investigate the effect of Teachers' Introvert and Extrovert personality on their instructional Immediacy. In order to address this issue, a study was conducted on 17 PhD holder university EFL lecturers from Guilan province. Instruments for this research included preliminary Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator test (MBTI), non-verbal immediacy (Richmond,V.et al. 2003), along with verbal immediacy scale observation inventory (J.Gorham, D.M. Christophel, 1990). After determining the lecturers' Introvert/Extrovert personality, with the aim of having a homogeneous and equal sample, 14 lecturers were chosen. Then, at the next stage 6 sessions of direct observation of each lecturer's classroom instructional immediacy was conducted. Statistical analysis of Pearson chi square between personality data and instructional Immediacy data has been performed. The results indicate that teacher's extrovert personality were correlated positively and significantly with their use of verbal immediacy p<.03. Similarly a significant relation was found between extrovert personality and use of non-verbal immediacy p<.02. The other finding that the data presented was that gender of instructors had little or no significant effect on their verbal and nonverbal instructional immediacy.

Keywords:

EFL teachers , Introvert , Extrovert personalities , Verbal and Nonverbal instructional immediacy