The relationship between writing strategies and personality types of graduate Iranian EFL learners

In recent years, language learning research has been paying more attention to the factors that may affect the choice by language learners of language learning strategies in general and writing strategies in particular to enhance their own learning. Given the socio-cognitive nature of the act of writing, as Roca de Larios et al. (2002) note, both writer-internal and -external factors have been reported to influence the deployment of writing strategies. Personality type, as one of the influential internal factors among others, is the focus of the present study, which intended to investigate English language learners’ writing strategies with reference to their personality types at different universities in Iran. To this end, a writing strategy questionnaire was employed to tap into the memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, social, and affective strategies of 210 participants. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire was utilized to identify the self-reported personality types of Iranian EFL learners. The analysis of the participants’ perceptions demonstrated a significant relationship between writing strategies and personality types. Furthermore, it was found that metacognitive and cognitive strategies were the most frequently used strategies and memory strategies the least frequently used ones as reported by the participants.