Influence of Personality Traits on English Language Performance of Secondary School Students in Oyo

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue VII, July 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Influence of Personality Traits on English Language Performance of Secondary School Students in Oyo

Samuel, Joseph Gana¹, Adeogun, Rebecca Oluwafeyisayomi², Asokere, Sunday Idowu^3
1,2,3Department of Social Sciences Education, University of Ilorin

Abstract: The study examined the influence of personality traits on English Language performance of secondary school students in Oyo Town, Oyo State, Nigeria. Descriptive survey research design was employed in the study. The population of the study comprised all senior secondary school three (SSS 3) in Oyo. Specifically, the study targeted Senior Secondary School three (SSS 3) students from 10 secondary schools in Oyo Town. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 300 respondents from the randomly selected secondary schools in the study area. Adapted questionnaire from John and Srisava (1999) was used to determine the Personality Traits of the sampled respondents and Academic Performance Test extracted from 2017/2018 WASSCE English Language past questions was used to determine the academic performance of the students. The reliability of the instrument was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha. The personality traits scale yielded reliability coefficient values of 0.79. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of percentage and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The findings of the study revealed that the personality trait that is predominant among the students was openness to experience and followed by extraversion personality traits. The second finding revealed that the level of academic performance of secondary school students in English Language in Oyo town was low. It was recommended among others that teachers, parents and students should be educated on the knowledge of individual differences of which personality trait plays a major role on how one react to issues and academic activities and performance in school.

Keywords: Personality Traits, Performance, English Language and Secondary School Students.

I. INTRODUCTION

Individual differences seem to become the essential focus of researches and researchers’ interest in the field of educational psychology especially in terms of how it affects the academic performance of students. Individual differences have been of interest to the study of learning and academic performance in the field of education. From educational psychologists’ point of view, people exhibit differences when it comes to their behaviours, emotions, reaction to situations, and the same can be said of how students’ respond to questions, react to situations which could be as a result of their personality traits. In essence, anything that affects the effectiveness of students’ minds also affects their academic performance and behaviors.

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