Students’ Personality Traits and Performance Correlates of High Grades in Senior School Certificate English in Kwara State, Nigeria

This paper is a report on a study which examined students’ personality traits and performance correlates of high grades in senior school certificate English. This is an attempt to correlate students’ personality traits, performance in other subjects and high grades in SSCE with particular reference to motivation, attitude, aptitude and extroversion levels. Students’ personality attribute questionnaire (SPAQ) was designed by the researcher to enable him assess respondents’ views on personality traits. A purposive sample of 346 students with high grades in English was drawn from the target population of 1,800 students from the three Senatorial Districts of Kwara State. The major findings include (a) students’ personality traits in relation to the learning of English was rather low; (b) there was a positive but low significant relationship between each of the traits and high grades in SSCE; (c) there was a positive and high significant relationship between performance in each of other subjects and high grades in senior school certificate English (HGSSCE), with Art subjects indicating the highest correlation. The paper recommends, among other suggestions that teachers of English should co-operate with teachers of other subjects while they in turn assume the role of English teachers indirectly, Education policy makers would need to focus attention on the concept of English across the curriculum.

Keywords: Personality traits, performance correlates, high grades, senior school certificate English, Kwara State