The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Students` Academic Achievements in General EFL Classes

Emotional Intelligence, the ability to be aware of, understand, and express oneself, the ability to be aware of, understand, and relate to others, the ability to deal with strong emotions, and the ability to adapt to change and solve problems of a social or personal nature, can be considered an important factor in learning a language as it enhances the verbal fluency which is the ultimate goal in FLL. The present study intended to consider the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance in Osku-Iran Islamic Azad University`s EFL classes. For this purpose, 110 undergraduate EFL sophomore and junior students participated in this study. First, in the middle of the term they were required to complete Bar- On (1997) Emotional Intelligence Inventory and their EI scores were computed based on the guidelines Bar-On (1997) provided. At the end of the term the academic course final exam was administered to the students to achieve their academic mean score which was computed out of 20. After that the degree of correlation between EI and academic mean score was found. It became evident that there is no meaningful relationship between total EI score and academic mean score but there is a meaningful and positive relationship between some sub-scales of emotional intelligence and academic mean score. Therefore, material developers and syllabus designers are required to take emotional factors into account when they want to design syllabuses or make materials ready for teaching.