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

The Language teaching is a complex process influenced by many psychological factors such as personality traits (Tonelson, 1981) and socio-communicative styles (Thomas. Et al. 1994). This research 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 14 PhD holder university EFL lecturers from Guilan province. Instruments for this research included preliminary Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI) Test, non-verbal immediacy scale, along with verbal immediacy scale observation inventory. After determining the lecturers Introvert/Extrovert personality, at the next stage, six sessions of direct observation of each lecturer s classroom instructional immediacy were conducted. Statistical analysis of Fisher s exact test between data along with Pearson s correlation was run to determine the relationship between teacher s extrovert personality and their use of verbal immediacy; the results indicate strong, positive correlation (r=.7, p . 03). Similarly, a strong, positive correlation was found between extrovert personality and use of non-verbal immediacy (r=.75, p . 01). The other finding of the study was that instructors’ gender showed no significant relation with their verbal and nonverbal instructional immediacy.