On the relationship between emotional intelligence and foreign language skills in ELT

Emotional intelligence, as related with how an individual recognizes and manages his or her emotions, has made tremendous impact in scientific circles since the development of the concept. Countless researches have been done in order to assure its prominent role in an individual?s success in life. With the increasing demand for success in the developing world, the priority of emotional intelligence has also been regarded as an opportunity. Since emotional intelligence has been referred as crucial in many parts of people?s lives, it can be expanded into the world of language learning. In Turkey, most people complain about not being able to master the English language. The problem underlying this may be the effects of emotional intelligence and its subscales on learning. For this reason, this study has been conducted to fill a gap in the literature of ELT by focusing on the relationship between emotional intelligence and foreign language skills. The current study was conducted at a foundation university in Gaziantep in 2012. There were 341 (180 male and 161 female) English preparatory level students (from pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate) participating in the study. The data were collected using an adapted version of Bar-On EQ-i that has been designed for the purpose of the study and the reliability value was reported as .84. The data were analyzed using SPSS 16. After the analyses, except for the interpersonal EQ (t= -3.69, p< .01), no significant correlations were found between the genders. However, significantly positive correlations between emotional intelligence and language achievement (GPA) (r= .426, p< .01), and language skills- reading (r= .298, p< .01), listening (r= .351, p< .01), writing (r= .346, p< .01) and speaking (r= .299, p< .01) were shown. Moreover, significantly positive correlations between emotional intelligence subscales and language skills were also found. In order to determine the impact of emotional intelligence on language achievement (GPA) and language skills, regression analysis was applied to the data. The results showed that emotional intelligence is a strong predictor of language GPA (r2= .181, p<.01). Key Words: Emotional intelligence, EQ, Bar-On, language achievement, language skills.