Mania Nosratinia - Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Iran
Elnaz Sarabchian - Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Iran

Improving critical thinking skills among EFL students has been considered as one of the main goals of high educational periods in developed and developing countries. Some of the theorists in the field of education suggested that individual differences and personality traits influence critical thinking skills. This study examines the relationship among EFL students’ big-five personality traits and their critical thinking ability. Major emphasis was placed on the extent to which critical thinking ability can be predicted by personality factors. A group of 210 male and female learners, between 19 and 40 years old, majoring in English Translation and English Literature at Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran were randomly selected and given two questionnaires. The NEO-FFI, which provides measure of five well-established domains of personality, was used to assess students’ personality traits. The Honey Critical Thinking Appraisal was used to evaluate cognitive ability of EFL students. Multiple regressions were run to probe the power of personality traits in predicting critical thinking. According to the results, conscientiousness (R = .20, R2 = .04) was the best predictor of critical thinking and predicted 4 percent of critical thinking’s total score. Openness to experience was the second best predictor, which increased the predictive power to 7.2 percent (R = .269, R2 = .072). Finally the third best predictor, neuroticism increased the predictive power to 9.8 percent (R = .313, R2 = .098). Also, running Pearson Product Moment correlations indicated significant correlations between CT with domains of NEO-FFI. The correlations ranged from a high of .20 with Conscientiousness to .17 with Openness to Experience. The results of this study can help curriculum designers and education providers to consider personality differences in the process of fostering critical thinking abilities in students, and consider these differences in designing teaching methods and materials for students with different personalities

critical thinking, Big-five personality traits, effective learning, EFL learners