The Relationship between Big-Five Personality Traits, English Language Proficiency Scores on IELTS, and Academic Success of Iranian Foreign Students

Abstract

There is a potential to supply personality as a psychological factor in terms of the Big-Five Model including Extraversion, Agreeableness, Consciousness, Openness to Experience, and Neuroticism. This study was an attempt to examine the relationship between Big-Five personality traits, English language proficiency scores on IELTS, and academic success of Iranian foreign students. The participants of the study included 202 Iranian students (126 males and 76 females) who studied at English speaking universities in different countries including Armenia, Austria, Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States of America. The necessary data for this study were collected from participants' first-semester academic reports to measure the degree of academic achievement, academic IELTS certificates to determine the language proficiency of candidates, as well as International Personality Item Pool Big-Five inventory to identify the participants’ personality traits. The data were gathered via different communication tools. The correlational analyses showed that there were significant relationships amongst personality traits and Iranian foreign students’ language proficiency. Neuroticism was the only psychological trait, negatively correlated with both language proficiency and academic success of Iranian foreign students. The study also revealed that there was a high correlation between the scores on IELTS and academic success of Iranian foreign students. Finally, multiple regression analysis indicated the causality among the Big-Five personality traits, English language proficiency score on IELTS, and academic success of Iranian foreign students. These bear testimony to the idea of cognitive approach in that one’s underlying mental processes are in charge of second language learning process.