Abstract:

Learning English as a foreign language is important mostly in countries where English is not an official language as we are in daily contact with inscriptions, billboards, or websites that are in a foreign language. The aim of the current paper is to analyse the relationship between personality of students, their motivation to learn English as a foreign language, and their academic achievement during the learning process of the foreign language. Two questionnaires were used for the research, the one concerning the personality of the student, namely the Myers-Briggs-type Indicator (Myers & McCaulley, 1985). Due to the scope and purposes of our study, we used only one of the pair of personality scales in every case. We also used Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith, Garcia and McKeachie, 1991) to find motivation of students. To measure academic achievement, we used grades from English from the previous academic year. Both questionnaires were filled in by 172 students of two secondary schools, aged from 16 to 20 (Am= M= 17,69; SD=1,162), 84 boys and 88 girls. The results showed several important relationships that were more or less weak or moderately strong. A significant negative relationship was found between the student’s personality scale feeling (F) and the motivation to learn foreign language. Between the personality scale intuition (N) student´s motivation to learn foreign language, a significant positive relationship has been proven. Furthermore, we have proven a significant negative relationship between the student‘s extraversion (E) and academic achievement. The last significant negative relation was found between the student's academic achievement and his motivation to learn English. Based on these results, we recommend to teachers to become familiar with personal profiles of their students and not to forget to properly motivate them to learn foreign language.

Keywords:

Students, Motivation, Personality, Academic Achievement, Foreign Language.