Volume 7-6 October 2011.

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Title
The Big Five Personality Traits:
A New Horizon of Research in Language Teaching

Author
Masood Siyyari (Ph.D.)
Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran

Biodata
Masood Siyyari holds a Ph.D. in TEFL from Allameh Tabataba’i University. He is currently an assistant professor at Tehran’s Science and Research Branch of IAU, and teaches TEFL courses at BA and MA levels. He has presented and published papers on topics related to SLA and language testing/assessment in (inter)national conferences and journals.

Abstract
Personality traits are evidently an important factor in language learning since any cognitive operation is by nature integrated with emotions and personalities. Among several approaches to the study of personality, the dispositional approach assumes relatively enduring personality characteristics called traits leading to consistent behavior across situations. Based on this approach, several personality inventories have been designed including Costa and McCrae’s NEO-PR-I and NEO-FFI based on the five-factor personality theory aka the Big Five. Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness are the personality traits in the Big Five whose roles have rarely been investigated in language learning; therefore, this paper aims at introducing the Big Five and attempts to enumerate the reasons why the Big Five should be more often employed in language learning/teaching research. Moreover, a synopsis of the extensive use of the Big Five in different fields is provided, and some research potentials to study the Big Five in language learning/teaching are recommended. This paper closes with a mention of the need for validating the Big Five in different languages and cultures, and some guidelines for doing so are cited from the originators of the Big Five inventories.

Keywords: NEO-FFI, NEO-PR-I, Personality traits, The dispositional approach, The Big Five, Validation.