Introverts

The introverted personality type can be defined in many different ways. Cain (2012, p10) says "There are almost as many definitions of introvert and extrovert as there are personality psychologists."  Mark Vernon, writing in the Guardian newspaper of 27th June 2011, helpfully summarises Jung's theory of the introverted type thus:
The introvert is not forthcoming and needs regular retreats from the world. When many people are present, too many people are present: crowds are lonely places. The introvert's character may well appear defensive, brusque, pessimistic or glum – to the extravert. He keeps his good qualities hidden and friends might reflect, "it takes time to get to know her". At work, the introvert thrives under their own steam. When it comes to personal ethics, they value safety, trust and intimacy; and popular opinion is more dangerous than persuasive.
Introverts in the Jungian sense are broadly correlated to Kagan's high reactives - they therefore tend to be more sensitive to their environment. This means, in terms of preferences for work and study, that they prefer environments where they can be in control and work alone, as the unexpected produces extra stress. Click on the image below to hear Adam, one of our introverted students, talking about how he prefers to do one thing at a time and to do things on his own so that he can do them in the way that he likes.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5EXeyyWB0jlZ09aTUN3UXdIOEU/view


It is important to emphasize, however,  that there are many other "nurture" or environmental factors which will also affect an individual's preferences .  For example, Susan Cain (2012, p107), when interviewing Kagan, describes to him a child who is "slow to warm up" and nervous of strangers. She suggests that the child may be a classic high reactive.  However:
"No!" Kagan exclaims.  Every behaviour has more than one cause.  Don't ever forget that!  For every child who's slow to warm up, yes, there will be statistically more high-reactives but you can be slow to warm up because of how you spent the first three and a half years of your life."
For the purposes of this study, we classified students on a spectrum from strongly introvert to strongly extravert in order to gain a very broad picture of whether any one personality type performed better in particular types of vocabulary learning task. Of the 27 students who participated in the study, seven identified themselves as slightly introvert and a further three as introvert. No students self-identified as strongly introvert.  Two students declined to participate in the study and another student was not included due to persistent absence.  From observation, these three individuals appeared to be some of the most introverted students and so it may be that the strong introverts actually excluded themselves from the study.

10 of the 27 participants self- identified as introverts
 
Kate, a strong introvert, in her introduction to this study described how she found some aspects of the CELTA course over-stimulating and how this had led her to explore the area of personality types and learning.  In terms of this piece of research and the characteristics of introverts and high-reactives described above, we expected that the introverts might express a preference for working on their own and also hypothesized that they would perform better when studying in a quiet, less interactive manner. 

Click on the image below to hear Natalya, an introverted student, explaining how she likes to start learning new vocabulary in the lesson.  However, what is then most effective for her is when she writes the words on pieces of paper and puts them all around her house so that she can learn them when she is on her own.
 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5EXeyyWB0jlTUc4Q0V4bTdkT1k/view

One of the other slightly introvert students, commenting on the "working alone" lesson on the student questionnaire said "I prefer learn the vocabulary alone but exercise help remember them better." The same student commenting on the "groupwork" exercise said "too much play, don't enough to remember."

 

Results

We had expected introverts to perform best when working alone and when we compared the mean percentage test scores for each personality type (for students who were present for all four lessons), we found this to be partly true. Introverts performed the best in the test at the end of the "working alone" lesson.  However, by the end of term they had forgotten quite a number of the words, although they still scored better than the ambiverts or extraverts.  In fact, the best way of learning for the introverts appeared to be pairwork - this was the only instance in which the end of term test scores were higher than the pre-test.


Introverts performed best overall in the pairwork exercise, with good retention of the lexis in the end of term test

Here, Anna describes how she feels that working on her own or in pairs suits her slightly introvert personality. 


Another introvert student noted on the student questionnaire that "I don't like working in a group.  I prefer working on my own or in pairs."
 
In terms of enjoyment of the various ways of working, introverts seemed to be slightly more enthusiastic about the pairwork and groupwork exercises than working alone. 


Introverts seemed to be less enthusiastic about working alone than about pairwork and groupwork

 
The working alone activity was done first, and so it could have been perceived as less enjoyable by the introverts as the pattern was unfamiliar the first time. One introvert commented on the questionnaire "I can't write and no time" suggesting that they didn't have sufficient time to process the information before being expected to reproduce it for the post-test. As the following graphic suggests, introverts are often uncomfortable with change and new situations and so this may have adversely affected their enjoyment of the first lesson.




The full results of the study by activity type can be viewed on the groupwork, pairwork and working alone pages.  Our reflections on the methodology and results of the study can be found here.