Abstract

Nowadays technology has practically changed every aspect of language teaching. There are numerous studies focusing on the personality traits of students or other internet users towards the internet utilization. Nonetheless, little research has examined the personality traits of teachers towards using computers for educational purposes especially in the Malaysian context. The purpose of this study was to investigate the motivation and personality traits of TESL postgraduate students in Malaysia towards information and communications technology (ICT) usage in second language teaching. In addition, the relationships between the independent variables (motivation, and personality traits) and the dependent variable (ICT usage) were explored. Then a descriptive-correlational research was employed. A questionnaire survey was developed, reviewed by a panel of experts and its validity and reliability were verified through a pilot study. For the survey, 89 TESL postgraduate students were randomly selected. Moreover, follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted to strengthen the questionnaire survey results. The results indicated that English teachers have high levels of ICT utilization in the general software applications such as Internet, E-mail, presentation, word processing and office work and low levels of ICT usage for specialized software applications such as authoring, graphics and simulations. The results also showed that the participating teachers were highly motivated in teaching language with computers. Furthermore, the results related to the participants’ personality traits indicated that they were highly extrovert, agreeable, conscientious, open and moderately neurotic towards ICT usage. The findings of correlation analysis proved that the surveyed teachers’ motivation received a slightly moderate and positive relationship with ICT usage. Additionally, the findings of the Pearson correlation coefficient for the relationship between teachers’ personality traits and ICT usage showed that generally no correlation exist between the overall personality and ICT usage. In particular the findings showed that only extroverts had a slightly moderate and positive correlation with ICT usage. The interviews responses also verified the questionnaire results. The research results suggest that to develop ICT integration in the educational processes, teacher training computer skills and increasing the computer facilities at schools are required. Finally, implications, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

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