Delving into the Relationships among Iraqi EFL Learners' Willingness to Write, Personality Types and Writing Ability

It is highly conspicuous that learning and reaching high levels of mastery in writing and the psychological factors affecting it has an increasing importance. A common strategy that has attracted more attention in the field is the study of the possible effect of individual differences including willingness to write and personality type on the writing performance of language learners. As in particular no study in Iraq, to our knowledge, has considered such relationships, the present study dissects the links between EFL Iraqi learner’s willingness to write, writing ability and personality types. To homogenize the learners, 200 English university students from Diwaneyah English language departments were selected through convenience sampling and were required to participated in Oxford Placement Test from which 120 EFL language were considered intermediate. The intermediate participants were also asked to fill out two questionnaires of Willingness to write and five – factor personality type and complete a writing task. The Pearson correlation between the scores showed that willingness to write and writing ability are moderately correlated and that from among five sub-factors of personality traits, conscientiousness has the highest positive correlation and Neuroticism has the lowest negative correlation with writing ability. The findings of this study have important implications for teachers and administrators to know how to consider psychological factors to improve students’ writing ability