The purpose of this study was to determine whether terms used in the Annehurst Curriculum Classification System (ACCS) are appropriate and useful to describe learner characteristics. From the twelve characteristics postulated in the ACCS to describe learners, six were selected for study: experience, intelligence, motivation, emotion-personality, creativity, and sociability. In the ACCS, each of these characteristics is described by a series of paired words, such as patient-impatient and optimistic-pessimistic, one word in each pair being identified with the characteristic positively and the other negatively. Seven such pairs were selected from the ACCS for each of the six selected characteristics. The 84 words thus selected were dissociated from the ACCS characteristics and Q-sorted by 317 experienced teachers, each teacher sorting the 84 words to characterize a particular student. A factor analysis of the results produced a new set of characteristics, labelled by the researchers as capacity to learn, human relations, maturity, sense of independence, experience, and sense of control. These six terms may represent a way of characterizing students that is superior to the six terms from the ACCS, or they may only indicate that there are various equally valid ways of characterizing students. (IM)