Summary: | Considering the importance of learners' characteristics in facilitating or hindering second language oral
communication, two personality traits that have received a lot of attention from researchers are extroversion and
introversion. However, their findings have been contradictory - some found that extroversion correlates significantly
with speaking skills while others disconfirm this finding. This study aimed to examine the EFL introvert and extrovert
learners' speaking performances across motivational levels. The sample comprised 75 female students from a science
college whose English proficiency was at the elementary to pre-intermediate levels, the students were taking English
as a compulsory subject. The author used the English Level Test by the British council to determine their levels, the
EPQR-S questionnaire was used to identify their personality types, and the AMTB questionnaire was used to measure
their motivational levels. Their speaking ability was determined by administering a speaking test. Descriptive and
inferential statistics were extracted from the data by using SPSS. The two-way ANOVA revealed no significant
differences in speaking results between highly motivated introverts and extroverts as well as between low motivated
introverts and extroverts. This means that the personality traits do not play an essential role in the learners' speaking
performance, suggesting that EFL learners can perform well in the oral test regardless of their personality types and
motivation level. This paper concludes by calling for more research into this seemingly clear-cut link between
extroversion/introversion and the oral ability of ESL/EFL learners by examining this link with another variable that
could provide a more nuanced insight.
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