Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

(1977), after interviewing teachers as to their views of good and bad language learners,
reported that teachers felt that poor learners in the classroom lacked "self-confidence".
Outgoing personality. Outgoing personality may also fit the requirements of prediction
no. 3 to some extent. Chastain (1975) reported that performance in foreign language at
the college level was related to scores on the Marlowe-Crowne Scale of reserved versus
outgoing personality, with outgoing students tending to get higher grades. Pritchard
(1952; cited in Pimsleur et al., 1962) observed the playground behavior of thirty-two
grammar school boys and found "a correlation of 0.72 between his measure of
'sociability' and the capacity to speak fluently in French" (Pimsleur et al., p. 168).
Wesche (1977), studying thirty-seven Canadian civil servants in an intensive French
course, found a correlation between "role playing" and proficiency in listening
comprehension and speaking skills (r = 0.60). "Role-playing" referred to the willingness
of the student to take the part of a character in a dialogue or role-playing situation, "with
speech characterized by prosodic expressions of feeling appropriate to the context and
by accompanying gestures and facial expressions" (p. 359). This could reflect
extroversion, self-confidence, and/or satisfaction with the learning situation, as well as
general anxiety level.
Naimon, Fröhlich, Stern, and Todesco (1978) did not find a relationship between
proficiency and introversion/extroversion, as measured by the Maudsley Personality
Inventory. Naimon et al. doubted the validity of this measure in relation to the classroom
situation, however: "Often, students who had reported that they were shy and
embarrassed, and that they were afraid to speak out in class and were afraid of people
laughing at them, and similarly, whom the investigators regarded as being introverted on
the basis of classroom observation, scored no differently on many occasions on the
Extroversion scale than did students who reported being 'extroverted' and acted
accordingly" (p. 261).
Empathy. The evidence here is not overwhelming. Naimon, Fröhlich, Stern, and
Todesco (1978) used Hogan's measure of empathy, but found no significant relationship
with either listening comprehension or imitation (r = 0.025 and 0.008) for their students
of French as a second language in Toronto high schools. Guiora and his
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