INVESTIGATING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND LANGUAGE ACHIEVEMENT: A CASE OF TEFL AND NON-TEFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The increasing number of recent researches shows that emotional intelligence is important as well as other intelligences in many aspects of people’s lives. Although it is not vastly used or studied, it can be found in language teaching and learning. This study was an investigation to detect the relationship between English as a foreign language students’ emotional intelligence and their language achievement at university level. To do this, 115 undergraduate EFL and Non-EFL university students from freshman to senior ones from Hamedan and Kermanshah Islamic Azad University, Iran, took part in this study. For the purpose of data collection, the researchers administered Proficiency test and Bar-On’s (1997) emotional intelligence inventory. Eighty-six participants were considered homogeneous to start the research. To analyze data, Pearson correlation coefficient was used. The findings of the present study revealed that there was a significant relationship between the students’ emotional intelligence and their language achievement. Girls were found to have higher EQ level than boys in this particular study. The findings of this study may serve as recommendations to instructors to modify methods which can be appropriate for students and their emotional intelligence level and also might help them select appropriate teaching materials for students with different abilities.