Flipped Learning in a General English Course: Learner Performance across Personality Traits,, Ambiguity Tolerance,, and Willingness to Communicate

Flipped learning is one of the recent teaching methods in which teaching takes place outside the classroom, and class time is reserved for practicing and consolidating learning under the supervision of the teacher. Various studies in the world and Iran have examined the effectiveness of flipped learning in teaching English, but these studies have been conducted either in the context of schools and private language institutes, or with English language college students. This study examines the performance of 182 general English students at Farhangian University of Mashhad. Based on the results of paired and independent t-tests and repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance, flipped learning improves students’ learning in a general English course. In addition, personality traits and tolerance of ambiguity do not affect the effectiveness of flipped learning. Moreover, the willingness to communicate, although statistically significant, does not meaningfully influence the effectiveness of flipped learning due to the small effect size which is around 3%. The findings imply that flipped learning can be one of the ways to increase the effectiveness of general language teaching regardless of learner characteristics such as personality, ambiguity tolerance, and willingness to communicate.