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Publisher:
Oscar Publishing Services
Servi
ABSTRACT
The current article aimed to reveal the correlation between cognition of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and stances of
achieving success in second language learning. It is obvious that EI plays a major role for ESL learners in language
learning. However, one of the research questions of the present article is that “How EI may impact on learners’
development in a language learning process, positively or negatively?”
KEYWORDS
Emotional Intelligence (EI), SLA learners, integrated language skills, success in SLA.
INTRODUCTION
There have been a great number of researches done by
outstanding scholars and linguists into the field of
English language and most of them have investigated
the language connected with other aspects, such as
learner beliefs, learning strategies, language learning
success and their impact on language learning and
teaching, as well. Several investigations held into
second language acquisition (SLA) have proved the
importance of Intelligent Quotient (IQ) in achieving
success in second language (Oz, Demirezen and
Pourfeiz,2014). Here a question appears, whether
emotions should be considered as important as
intelligence or not.
Research Article
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND
SUCCESS IN INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILLS IN SLA
Submission Date:
March 21, 2023,
Accepted Date:
March 26, 2023,
Published Date:
March 31, 2023
Crossref doi:
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume03Issue03-08
Juraeva Shakhzoda Izzatillayevna
Department Efl Teacher, Kimyo International University In Tashkent English Language, Uzbekistan
Journal
Website:
https://theusajournals.
com/index.php/ajps
Copyright:
Original
content from this work
may be used under the
terms of the creative
commons
attributes
4.0 licence.
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Publisher:
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Servi
Occasionally, teachers come across particular
challenges while teaching ESL to foreign students
because of the learners’ emotional states. Various
problems may frequently occur with some ESL learners
when they feel less self-confident, demotivated or they
have low self-esteem. In this paper the reasons of
these difficulties will be discussed in details and proved
by previous researches. They are mostly correlated
with learners’ EI as its affect to different areas of
people’s lives incl
uding success in language learning
was investigated by many researchers. According to
Alavinia & Agha Alikhani,2014 and etl. “Higher levels of
emotional intelligence can serve as a driving force and
motivation for language achievement” (p 417).
Likewise, positive relationship between EI, academic
achievement and language skills is stated by Fahim and
Pishghadam (2007). According to Pishghadam’s (2009)
research Iranian students were investigated in order to
understand the relationship between emotion and
non-verbal and verbal intelligences. Research revealed
that emotion can effect in a positive way on ESL
learners’ writing skill and is thought to be a key
instrument in learning any skill of language. One more
investigation was done by Zarezadeh (2014) in which
he identified indispensable correlation between
success in language learning and “stress management,
adaptability, reading skills, general mood and
adaptability, speaking skill and Emotional Intelligence
quotient and Interpersonal Intelligence and stress
management” (p. 519).
Having learnt various works on this study subject, it
shows that there were different attitudes and
approaches towards EI and ESL learning achievements.
It should be noted that most of the researches reveal
positive relationship between them, however there is
uncertainty as well, as some scholars do not accept it
as important as IQ. Further investigations should be
done in order to clarify the real importance of
emotional intelligence. One of the SLA learners was
observed and some affects which lead to success in
second language acquisition were found. Target of this
study was not only identifying the problems but also
suggest some actions to take immediately to enhance
her
emotional
intelligence.
Additionally,
EIQ
(Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire), interview,
English Proficiency Test on integrated skills were
included to the current study.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
After choosing the subject of my study, I started to
work with a learner to improve her English language
proficiency level by enhancing her emotional
intelligence. The research participant was a 13-year-old
school girl from an ordinary Uzbek family who studies
in Russian specified group at school. She is the only
person who can speak in English at home because her
parents and siblings cannot. Her parents always
encourage her to study well and give all opportunities
for her. Her family members including her
grandmother, parents and brother usually speak in
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Russian at home as well as her teachers and classmates
also use Russian language during the lesson. However,
there is very less chance to use English in her everyday
life.
The only thing which makes her learn English language
is her own self-motivation. She had to change her
school several times because of her father’s job
so it
was difficult for her to adopt new school, new
classmates and new English teachers, so she started
learning English at the age of 12. She studied hard at
the center and became pre-intermediate level in 4
months which shows how an effective learner she is.
She was quite quiet and introvert, less sociable before
learning English but after collaborating with other
students at the learning center and working on herself
hard she became more sociable, extrovert and
motivated student. She reads, listens and speaks in
English a lot. She enjoys listening to English songs
which was one of the reasons of her language success.
She knows almost all English songs and sing them and
it helped her to remove a barrier in front of her because
she learned to manage her emotions and to feel the
language as well as to live in this language. She is audial
learner and loves listening to native speakers’
speeches but she hates writing in her second language.
I conducted four lessons with her and I tended to focus
more on her productive skills because she showed very
poor results in speaking and writing skills. However,
she found very few answers from listening and
reading, too.
In the first lesson, I asked her to give an interview and
to do Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (EIQ),
proficiency test and recorded her results for myself. In
the second lesson, I conducted speaking lesson. In this
lesson I explained her speaking tips and we practiced
general speaking topics, such as family, friends, school,
and future plans. Next lesson, we mostly did readings
together and I provided her some tips which help to do
the test effectively and faster. Although, she was less
motivated in initial stage of research, she became more
motivated than before as she watched a lot of
motivational English videos in class and out of the
class. Additionally, while carrying a research with her I
found out that she was not self-confident enough
because of her poor speaking. Then she stated that she
had high self -esteem but she could not perform well at
the beginning. But after having some practice she
stopped feeling anxiety and spoke more confidently.
One more thing which assisted her to improve
speaking and listening skills was listening to English
songs. She did not just listen to music, we did karaoke,
too where she sang songs herself. In the fourth lesson,
we dealt with writing which was a bit challenging for
her. I used diary writing technique for her because she
was introvert and used to keep diaries. So, I used her
own writing style to improve her writing skill. Finally,
last stage was checking her English proficiency
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Publisher:
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improvement after the conducted lessons with the
help of the same questionnaire and test as a post-test.
Fortunately, this time she showed higher results than
the previous time. The results are given in tables and
diagrams below.
RESULTS
Comparison of EIQ taken in pre - and post-tests
Table 1. The results of the questionnaire from pre -test
Interpreting the subject’s totals according to her
answers towards questionnaire for each area of
competency, based on five Emotional Intelligence
Quadrants, such as self-awareness, managing
emotions, motivating oneself, empathy and social skill,
I found out that she has strong Self- awareness (38),
Empathy (42) and Social skill (40), while she needs to
pay more attention to manage her emotions and
motivate herself as they show lower scores, 33 for each
out of 50. The results were satisfactory and total score
of the test was not too low which means she meets the
high level Emotional Intelligence standards.
Table 2. The questionnaire results from post-test
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SA-Self-awareness ME-Managing emotions MO- Motivating oneself E-Empathy SS-Social skill
A glance at the diagram reveals the information that
subsect of the current study showed positive
development in her EI in overall comparing pre- and
post-questionnaire. It is obviously seen from the
diagram that she did not use to stay focused and to
think clearly when experiencing strong emotions
before the study as her result for ME was 33 and it grew
to 36 in post-test. Furthermore, she became more
motivated and her score for MO increased from 33 to
43. On the other hand, her empathy went down from
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42 to 39 which means that she started caring more
about herself rather than others. Another interesting
point is that, SA (Self- awareness) stayed stable at 38.
English Proficiency Test Results
As I investigated the correlation between EI and
integrated language skills, I took a language
proficiency test based on four skills. The same test was
used for both pre-and post-tests. Test is divided into
four skills including several parts. First of all, the
subject of the study did reading tasks which consists of
five parts and each part of the test deals with various
question types: Part 1 and Part 2: Matching the
sentences with texts Part 3. True/False exercise Part 4.
Multiple choice Part 5. Fill in the gaps Secondly, writing
part was done by her which includes three parts: Part
1. Transformation of the sentences Part 2. Writing a
note (35-45 words) Part 3. Writing a story. Listening
section consists of four parts and each part includes 5
to 7 questions. In part one the subject is required to do
multiple choice test from 1 to 7 using pictures provided;
in part 2 also multiple choice task is done while part 1
asks fill in the missing information and finally, last part
includes Yes/No questions. The difference between
pre- and post-tests are illustrated in the following
table.
Table 3. Comparison of Pre -and post-tests
In pre-test the subject of the study was A2 level and
after having four lessons she took a test almost all skills
accept writing. Her writing was satisfactory in pre-test,
so she did not have to write part 9 again. However, the
post-test results were higher than the results of pre-
test. Finally, she improved her language proficiency
from A2 to A2+ which very significant achievement for
her. After improving her emotional intelligence her
academic skills also started to grow up.
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There was improvement on learner’s reading, listening
and speaking skills, while writing skill has not been
changed. The results provided in the diagram reveals
that her reading skill improved by 6, as it was16 in the
pre-test and rose to 22 in the post-test. There was a
growth in listening and speaking aspects, from 13 to 17
and from 16 to 22 respectively. All in all, the results of
the participant were satisfactory and proved that there
is a crucial relationship between emotional intelligence
and success in learning four English skills.
INTERVIEW FINDINGS
According to the subject’s
answers given in the
interview, it should be noted that she has problems
with managing emotions, speaking up because of the
fear to make errors while speaking and less motivation.
There were also other factors influencing on her
language performance, such as family background,
personality and less opportunity to learn a language. In
the interview she mentioned about her past learning
experience and after which I found out the reasons of
less EI. According to her words, when she started
learning English it was too difficult for her to
pronounce the words correctly. That’s why, she always
used to take the lowest marks among others and her
classmates used to call her “a looser”. After such an
attitude towards her she stopped speaking in English
at all, even in the exams. However, at that time no one
cared about her emotions and feelings which made her
introvert, less motivated and isolated. During the
interview one thing was clear that she has a lot of
ambitions but does not know how to deal with her
current problems. Moreover, she mentioned about her
learner style, too. I found out that she prefers reading
and listening to writing and speaking which shows that
her receptive skills are more developed than
productive skills. After an interview, I made an outline
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of my case study and prepared activities which fulfill
her needs in language learning process.
DISCUSSION
Among several discussions about learners’ success in
learning, Pishghadam (2009) found out the most
crucial role of EI in students’ academic performance in
four language skills, including speaking, reading,
writing and listening. His studies showed how EI
strongly correlated with the second language learning
process. According to his findings, EFL learners who
have positive Emotional intelligence succeed well in
terms of study as they are far more motivated, self-
confident and feel less discomfort when they are in the
center of attention. It is proved by many psychologists
that less self-esteem and motivation might lead to the
growth of hesitation and uncertainty in learning a
particular language. Learners with higher EI are better
learners in terms of education because they are not
frightened of taking risks learning new knowledge,
they hardly ever give up when they face difficulties and
can deal with any tough situations. Also, there is
another research which shows the positive effect of EI
on second langua
ge learners’ writing skill. Recently,
Shao, Yu and Ji (2013) did a research on the relationship
between ESL learners’ success in writing and
emotional intelligence.
Garette and Young (2009) maintained that teachers
should mostly focus on the academic intelligence of
learners and enhance their knowledge about language
and use of foreign language rather than discussing
affect and emotion which are tiny fractions of
language and defined as the shadows of second
language learning classroom. Having learnt general
information on EI, it is important to deal with the
researches on the correlation between EI and
productive as well as receptive skills.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the important relationship between
emotional intelligence and the language performance
has still been investigated by well-known as well as
pioneer researchers. Several positive and some
negative impacts of EI on ESL learning process were
observed. The outcomes of the research can be best
defined by this approach. Taking all of these attempts
into account it must be mentioned that the nature of
language skills is so interpersonal, general mood and
stress management play a contributory role in this field
of study (Pishghadam, 2009). The implementation of
the findings of the study can motivate ESL teachers to
pay more attention to the classroom activities which
improve students’ emotional intelligence. Teachers in
educational authorities may become a helping hand for
the students who have less emotional intelligence and
perform badly in language learning process because of
the anxiety, demotivation or less self-confidence.
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As the subject of the study was a school girl who has a
number of problems connected to emotion, I strongly
believe that emotional intelligence must be taught as a
subject at sch
ools to improve students’ academic
performance. If the students are self-motivated and
have high level of self-esteem, they can grow faster in
language learning and become a confident user of the
language.
Secondly, it should be noted that emotional
intelligence is not important only for ESL learners, but
also it plays great role for teachers, as well. In short,
this kind of research should be done in ESL/EFL
teaching, too. This case study was dedicated only to
define the relationship between emotional intelligence
and integrated language skills. Further investigations
can correlate EI with gender issues, age, learner beliefs
and etc.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Many scholars described the term emotional
intelligence (EI) differently. Initially, it was used by
Payne (1986) after what this term developed by other
young psychologists, Salovey and Mayer (1990). EI is
the combination of abilities to be able to understand
the emotions and emotional knowledge, to control
them and lead to emotional and intellectual growth
(Mayer and Salovey,1997). On the other hand, Binet
(1915) provides his own definition like “an emotional
concept”. Later, another linguist Goleman (1995) has
given the following definition: abilities including to face
anxiety, to motivate oneself, to be aware of oneself, to
monitor emotions and to feel emphasis. He considers
that EI is an idea which grows from a research and goes
into human life and plays a great role in regulating
emotions.
Goleman (1995) has worked out five major research
findings, such as be
ing aware of one’s emotional state,
managing emotion, self-
motivation, defining others’
emotions and getting on well with other people in
society. On the basis of his research, person who owns
higher EI should have more positive qualities
comparing with others, they should be happier,
motivated, sociable and extrovert. EI also thought to
be the mixture of mental and non-mental abilities by
Cooper (1996/1997) and Orioli, et.al (1999). One who
can regulate his or her emotions are able to manage
his/her intelligence, as well. According to the various
definitions provided by scholars, it can be concluded
that correlation of human’s emotion and cognition can
lead to successful results in language learning process
and assist EFL learners to improve their language
abilities followed by emotional intelligence. EI helps
learners to monitor their feelings and emotions
towards learning, as most of them give up learning
something according to their emotional states.
How much the cognitive intelligence growth, so much
the EI should progress, too. One of the most obvious
reasons is that they cannot be separated and
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understood differently, as they significantly impact on
each other. In some occasions, educational authorities
consider that gaining less success in learner’s
education and personal life is the result of low IQ.
Zalesne & Nadvorney (2011) provided a definition to
learner’s academic achievement as “about more than
simply cognitive skills; it’s skin to culture, including not
only cognitive but also affective and social skills, all of
which contribute to a student’s level of success”
(p.264). However, Van Der Zee, Thijs & Schakel (2002)
argues that emotional intelligence is good for solving
real life problems and deal with real life education, as
academic intelligence cannot fulfill these concepts.
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Aavinia, P., & Agha Alikhani, M. (2014). Willingness
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Binet,
A. (1905). A propos la measure de I’
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Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New
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Demirezen, M. (2015). Emotional Intelligence and
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Pishghadam, R. (2009). A quantitative analysis of
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uestionnaire-LAL1.pdf
