RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

8th International Scientific Conference - SGEM2008, www.sgem.org, SGEM2008 Conference Proceedings/ ISBN: 954-918181-2, June 16-20, 2008, Vol. 2, 661-666 pp

ABSTRACT

The increasing number of recent researches indicates that emotional intelligence is more
important than IQ in many fields. In literature, many quantitative findings indicate that
there is a significant relationship between academic achievement and emotional
intelligence skills. In other words, analysis indicates that emotional intelligence skills
can serve as a indicator of academic achievement and effective learning. The main focus
of this research is to discuss the relationship between emotional intelligence skills and
academic achievement in foreign language and explore how their relationship may
influence language learning. The sample data for this research is 372 School of
Vocational Studies students in Istanbul. Thus, this research aimed at exploring the
relationship between academic achievement (effective learning) and emotional
intelligence skills. In the research, participants emotional intelligence was assessed by
the Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI, 2nd Version) developed by Boyatzis and
Goleman. According to the results, a strong relationship (r>0,40) was found between
academic achievement and emotional intelligence skills.

Keywords: emotional intelligence, academic achievement, language learning