Introversion, Extroversion and their Potential Influence on Writing Ability: A Case of Iranian Students of Medical Related Majors

The present study is an investigation over the question of the role of individual differences in terms of extraversion vs. introversion on writing ability of university EFL learners, studying in one of the medical-related majors. The trait of extraversion–introversion is a central dimension of human personality theories. Many of students experience some difficulty writing in English, leading to some drawbacks in their educational developments. One major reason seems to be relevant to the inner characters of the learners; traits such as introversion and extroversion. For the purpose of specifying the relationship between the aforementioned character traits and the ability in writing as a discourse, 2 groups, consisting of 30 university students majoring in physiotherapy and 30 HIT (Health Information Technology) students were chosen as the testing groups. As for homogenizing the English level of the testees, Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was utilized; in order to specify the students’ character trait, the EPI (EPQ) personality test was administered prior to the study. The Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) measures two pervasive, independent dimensions of personality, Extraversion-Introversion and Neuroticism-Stability, which account for most of the variance in the personality domain. Each form contains 57 Yes-No questions with no repetition of items. Data gathered was analyzed through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). A tdistribution was the tool for assessing introvert and extrovert s capability differences in writing. The results manifested a direct relationship between the two character traits, namely introversion/extroversion and writing ability. It also revealed that, contrary to many similar findings among the researches performed on the same problem, extroverts perform relatively better than introverts on the writing activities.