BASES EPISTEMOLÓGICAS DE LA INVESTIGACIÓN

REVIEW OF PAPER
JANETHE ALEXANDRA LÓPEZ PÉREZ

Title: The effect of Emotional Intelligence in English language learning

Review: This study was made to find out whether emotional intelligence affects English language
learning.
The subjects involved were 330 of their last semesters of major degree in English literature and Teaching
English as a foreign language. They were randomly selected from different universities in Hamadan, Iran.
All of them took a 40-minute EQ-i which contained 133 short sentences and employed a Likert’s five-
point response scale from “very seldom or not true of me” to “very often true of me or true of me”. The
student’s scores could be located among 5 scales:
1. Intrapersonal
2. Interpersonal
3. Stress management
4. Adaptability
5. General mood
Also, the researcher took student’s scores of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, as well as
their course average from all colleges.
The results showed that there was correlation between grade point average and Stress Management
intelligences; reading skill and Stress Management; General mood and Adaptability; speaking skill and
Emotional Intelligence Quotient; and, between Intrapersonal Intelligence and General Mood.
To conclude, the author stated that emotional intelligence does affect English language learning, that his
findings can be helpful for teachers, and that it is possible to teach emotional intelligence and enhance
it on students who have low level of emotional intelligence by leading classroom discussions, listening
to soft music, watching emotional movies, individual’s self-revelation, designing questionnaires and
reading texts of psychology. All this with the aim of strengthen their comprehension and production of
emotions, and therefore, their target language skills.

Reference: Zarezadeh, T. (2013). The effect of emotional intelligence in English language learning. In
Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 1286 – 1289. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.745
REVIEW OF PAPER 2

Title: The impact of Emotional Intelligence on developing speaking skills: From Brain-based perspective

Review: This study presents the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and student’s
perceptions towards speaking classes. The aim of the study was to show that students can develop their
emotions, lead them according to their needs, and overcome the hesitation about participating in
speaking lessons, as well as prove that students can develop relationship with their fellows,
communicate more effectively and understand their feelings (developing EQ). This was based on Brain-
based learning activities.
The participants were 21 students of English as a foreign language at a preparatory school of a state
university in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The researcher made use of a quasi-experimental method.
A questionnaire including twenty statements with a three-point-scale as “Agree, Not sure, Disagree” was
used to find out the students’ EQ levels. It was also utilized a questionnaire that included 16 statements
about Brain-based learning activities, which had a two-point-scale ranged as “Agree” or “Disagree”.
The results and tables were analyzed with the use of SPSS version 15 and Microsoft Excel Program. The
study ended up with the results that the students with high levels of EQ are more willing to join speaking
classes. On the other hand, students with lower EQ scores hesitate more in speaking classes. Another
finding was that most of the students who participated more in Brain-based activities were those with
high levels of EQ. They felt more relaxed and were more likely to take part in speaking activities. The
author states that “this may be because of the importance of the experiences in learning process. No
matter what EQ level a student may have, they all believe in the effectiveness of real-life situations in
language learning process and become more motivated” (Duygu, 2012: 4).

Reference: Duygu, F. (2012). The impact of emotional intelligence on developing speaking skills: From
brain-based perspective. In Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 (2012) 2094 – 2098. doi:
10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.05.434
REVIEW OF PAPER 3

Title: The relationship among Critical Thinking, Emotional Intelligence, and Speaking Abilities of Iranian
EFL Learners

Review: These researchers studied the relationship among critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and
speaking abilities of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were one hundred Iranian EFL learners of
private language institutes in Sanandaj, a western province in Iran. The researchers postulated questions
to be answered for the present study. For this, it was employed a quantitative and correlational method,
including:
1. “The California Critical Thinking Skills Test form B”
2. Bar-On’s (1980) emotional intelligence questionnaire, adapted for Iranians, containing 90 Likert-
scale items
3. The Language Oral Ability Assessment adapted from Walker (1990)
4. Interviews from the researchers
Some questions were answered using multiple correlation analyses of the variables of the study, as well
as multiple regression analyses. It was found that students who participated in critical thinking English
conversation class were more satisfied with their speaking class. Resulting that they were more willing
to participate.
As a conclusion, the researchers state that students’ speaking abilities can be improved if teachers
motivate their critical thinking skills by letting them ask questions and participate in challenging learning
tasks, which allow them speak more, thus, better understand the learning intention (Soodmad and
Rahimi, 2014: 4).

Reference: Soodmand, H. and Rahimi, M. (2014). The relationship among Critical Thinking, Emotional
Intelligence, and Speaking Abilities of Iranian EFL Learners. In Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences
136 (2014) 75 – 79. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.291
REVIEW OF PAPER 4

Title: The relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Speaking Skills of Iranian Advanced EFL
Learners

Review: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and
speaking skills. The participants in this research were 96 around 15-year-old Iranian advanced EFL
learners including 48 men and 48 women randomly selected from eight institutes in Tehran. They were
Persian speakers studying English as a foreign language. It was used a quantitative, non-experimental
method with the help of a correlational approach. The utilized materials were:
• A 30-minute general language proficiency test (including vocabulary, grammar, and cloze test).
• An EQ test developed by Bar-On including 90 items in 15 subscales: problem solving, happiness, stress
tolerance, independence, emotional self-awareness, reality testing, interpersonal relationship, self-
actualization, optimism, self-reliance, impulse control, empathy, assertiveness, social responsibility,
and flexibility. This EQ test was based on Likert Scales including: strongly disagree, disagree, slightly
agree, and strongly agree.
• A speaking test in a form of individual interview with the help of Farhady, Birjandi and Djafarpour
guidelines (1994) in a 1-6 rating scale taking into account students’ pronunciation, sentence structure,
vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
The researchers formulated a null hypothesis in this way: “There is not any significant relationship
between emotional intelligence and speaking skills of advanced EFL learners”. The findings of this
research showed that there is a strong relationship between emotional intelligence and speaking skills
of advanced EFL students. The author found that “through emotional intelligence enhancement,
students will be more active in oral communications and tend to achieve high level of proficiency in
language classes” (Khalili, 2018: 6). The researcher also gathered findings that can be applied in
educational systems in order to improve student’s oral and even listening, reading and writing skills.

Reference: Khalili, M. (2018). The relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Speaking Skills of
Iranian Advanced EFL Learners. In International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature.
doi: 10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.5p.22
REVIEW OF PAPER 5

Title: A quantitative analysis of the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Foreign Language
Learning

Review: The main objective of this research was to study the role of emotional intelligence in second
language learning. There was a participation of 508 second year students at four universities in Iran
(Mashhad and Tehran), comprising 134 men and 374 women aging between 19 and 29. They were
studying literature (271), translation (120), and teaching (115).
It was used an Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EQ-i) based on Bar-On (1996) with 133 items measuring
five areas of skills: intrapersonal EQ (40 items), interpersonal EQ (29 items), adaptability EQ (26 items),
stress management EQ (18 items), and general mood EQ (17 items). The researcher also made use of
students’ grade point average (GPA) gathered from all universities, and their scores in reading, listening,
speaking, and writing.
Pishghadam found that second language learning is strongly related to several levels of emotional
intelligence as well as that EQ (Emotional Quotient) accounts for any success in life more than IQ
(Intelligence Quotient). The subscales considered in this study predict academic success, since learning
a second language seems to be difficult, demanding, and full of stress and pressure for learners (Krashen,
1981). Besides, he also claims that Iranian teachers are perfectionists and demanding, which produces
fear on students, thus disabling them to write or speak unless they are perfect.

Reference: Pishghadam, M. (2009). A quantitative analysis of the relationship between Emotional

Intelligence and Foreign Language Learning. In Centre for Language Studies National University of
Singapore. Retrieved from: https://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v6n12009/pishghadam.pdf
REVIEW OF PAPER 6

Title: Exploring the relationship between EQ and intermediate EFL learners’ speaking performance: a
gender study

Review: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between speaking proficiency of Iranian
EFL learners and their Emotional Intelligence (EI) and gender. The participants were 40 students (20 men
and 20 woman) from Avaye Zaban Institute in Tehran, Iran, aged 16 to 19. The researchers formulated
four research questions and 4 null hypotheses to be analyzed. For this study, the author made utilized
the following three instruments:
• The Nelson English Language Test. It had 40 separate tests for ten levels of language proficiency
ranging from beginner to advanced.
• Speaking performance scale developed by Farhady (1995) considering accent, structure, vocabulary,
fluency, and comprehension abilities.
• Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory developed by Bar-On (1980). It was a self-report questionnaire
including 133 Likert-scale items.
The results of the study showed that personal factors and emotional intelligence are important to
student achievement and college success, and that intrapersonal, interpersonal, and general mood
components are highly related to speaking ability. Besides, the researcher found that it seems that men
and women have different strategies in the language learning. Female learners tended to use
social/affective strategy more frequently than male learners. The author states that it may originate from
biological and socializations related causes.

Reference: Salar, K. (2017). Exploring the relationship between EQ and intermediate EFL learners’
speaking performance: a gender study. In Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research. ISSN:
2376-760X
REVIEW OF PAPER 7

Title: Motivating and demotivating factors for students with low Emotional Intelligence to participate in
speaking activities

Review: The objective of this study was to understand the factors that can motivate and demotivate
students with low emotional intelligences to participate in speaking activities. To this research, ten men
and ten women participated, four beginners, four intermediate, and two advanced level students from
ages 18 to 25. They were taken from the ELT program at a public university in the South East of Mexico.
The author used three instruments for this study. The first one was the TMMS-24 (Salovey, Mayer,
Goldman, Turvey, and Palfai, 1995). It was used to measure the level of EI (emotional perception,
emotional comprehension, and emotional regulation). Secondly, the researchers asked the students to
write a once-a-week entry in an emotions journal for a period of seven weeks. Third, they used recorded
and transcribed semi-structured interviews.
The results showed the different motivating factor for men and women. What motivate men is their
goal-oriented performance, a neutral corrective feedback, and a supportive classroom community, while
women are motivated by interacting with native speakers as well as a supportive classroom community.
The demotivating factors for men are peer comparison, group competence, negative self-talk, and
corrective feedback, while demotivating factor for women are anxiety about public speaking, peer
evaluation, text anxiety, and lack of classroom community. These results clearly showed that men felt a
wide range of negative emotions while women experienced less of them.

Reference: Méndez, M. and Bautista, M. (2017). Motivating and demotivating factors for students
with low Emotional Intelligence to participate in speaking activities. Profile Issues in Teachers’
Professional Development. doi:10.15446/profile.v19n2.60652.