The Relationship of Personality Traits with English Speaking Anxiety: A Study on Turkish University Students

Abstract

Speaking in front of people is challenging even in one’s own language. Since personality and speaking anxiety are interrelated, students’ personality types are important to find out the reasons for their anxiety. The aim of the current study is to determine the personality traits of the participants; to investigate their foreign language speaking anxiety levels; and to find out whether students’ personality traits significantly predict their foreign language speaking anxiety. According to the results, extraversion, openness and conscientiousness significantly and negatively but neuroticism and agreeableness significantly and positively predict foreign language speaking anxiety. The majority have agreeableness which predicts foreign language speaking anxiety positively; this may explain why people cannot speak English in our country.