An Investigation on the Effect of Personality Traits and Self-regulated Learning Behavior on Oral English Performance among College Students in the Sultanate of Oman

Abstract Book of the 10th World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education

Year: 2026

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An Investigation on the Effect of Personality Traits and Self-regulated Learning Behavior on Oral English Performance among College Students in the Sultanate of Oman

Soodeh Hamzehlou-Moghadam

ABSTRACT:

In the Sultanate of Oman‚ there is a discernible gap between the communicative skills acquired by university students and the functional competencies required by the employment market․ While individual differences are known to influence learning, the mechanisms through which they impact oral proficiency remain inexpertly understood․ The current study attempts to investigate the relationship between personality traits (extroversion and introversion)‚ self-regulated learning behaviors‚ and oral English performance․ This research examines how the three phases of Zimmerman’s SRL model of self-regulation (forethought phase‚ performance control phase‚ and self-reflection phase) bridge the “transfer gap” in the development of linguistic and communicative competencies․ The research adopted Structural Equation Modeling (path analysis) technique to analyze these factors in a sample of 290 college students and their oral English performance․ The final structural model was a good fit (CFI = ․998‚ RMSEA = ․039)․ Crucially, the results establish that self-regulated learning serves as a total mediator in the relationship between personality traits and oral English performance. The final results show that personality is not a direct predictor of performance on oral tasks‚ but it is a “behavioral filter” determining the selection and execution of SRL strategies․ Specifically, introversion was found to significantly impede the forethought phase (β = -0․258‚ p < ․001)‚ causing a large "metacognitive gap" in task planning‚ whereas the self-reflection phase was found to be the most significant predictor of oral performance success, despite being used the least by the students.

Keywords: Extroversion; Introversion; Oral Proficiency; Path Analysis; Self-Reflection