Abstract
Emotional intelligence, as concerned with how an individual recognizes and regulates his or her emotions, has been in limelight quite recently. The present study seeks to fill a small gap in the literature on emotional intelligence, together with foreign language anxiety and empathy. To this end, short literary readings are used in a cognitive-affective reading-based course to see how emotional intelligence, foreign language anxiety and empathy are affected. Mayer, Salovey and Caruso (2002) Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), Cooper's (1996/1997) EQ-Map, Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope's (1986) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Test (FLCAS) and Caruso and Mayer's (1998) Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (MDEES) were administered to 70 Iranian EFL undergraduate students in a pretest posttest quasi-experimental design. MANOVA and ANCOVA were conducted. The results revealed that the cognitive-affective reading-based course in which literary readings were used significantly improved the subjects' emotional intelligence scores from the MSCEIT measure as well as empathy (MDEES) scores, but significantly decreased their foreign language anxiety (FLCAS) scores. The pedagogical implications for learners, teachers, educators and materials developers are presented.
Highlights
The debate for many philosophers concerns whether cognition is more important to our life or whether emotion is
Given the emotional and social nature of language learning, the broad objective of this study is to investigate the impact of a cognitive-affective reading-based course on emotional intelligence, foreign language anxiety and empathy
The results indicated that second language skills and Grade Point Average (GPA) strongly correlated with stress management and intrapersonal skills in the EQ test
Summary
The debate for many philosophers concerns whether cognition is more important to our life or whether emotion is. We do not know exactly when the debate first started, but philosophical considerations of the relations between thought and emotion in western culture go back to early Greek thoughts. Intelligence was considered as a concept devoid of emotion and symposiums on intelligence over the years repeatedly concluded that the first hallmark of intelligence is high-level mental ability such as abstract reasoning (Sternberg 1997). Terman (1921; cited in Sternberg 1997: 339), as a pioneer of IQ tests, states that "an individual is intelligent in proportion as he is able to carry on abstract thinking". Intelligence conceptualized as abstract thinking was demonstrated to predict academic success
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