Personality, Intelligence Components and Foreign Language Attainment

Approximately 1200 children from the Irish Republic were tested for various intelligence abilities, attainment in Irish (taught as a second language), personality traits of psychoticism, neuroticism and extroversion and attitude to learning foreign languages. Females had a significantly higher N score and had a significantly more positive attitude towards learning second languages and males had a significantly higher P score. The personality measures were not strongly related to the cognitive measures; anxiety, for example, does not appear to have an adverse effect on performance. There were low but positive correlations between attitude towards foreign language learning and the total score obtained in the Irish test. It is suggested that individuals have a more positive attitude towards subjects they are good at; hence the attitude could be influenced by innate ability. Attitude towards learning foreign languages also had low but significant correlations with some of the other cognitive tests, e.g. the English Spelling and Verbal Fluency tests. The results were very similar for both the primary and secondary school children. Age does not appear to influence personality measures during this period of childhood and adolescence.