The relationship between EFL students' emotional intelligence and writing achievement

Abstract

The aim of this study was threefold: (1) to further examine the possibility of using literature-based activities to raise EFL students' emotional intelligence (hereafter EI) and (2) to see whether there is any relationship between students' EI and writing achievement, in addition (3) to shed light on the implementation of such activities into the government-stipulated university syllabus of China. The participants of the study consisted of 68 non-English major freshmen in a university in HangZhou, China. To check the equality of the two groups, a writing ability test and TEIQue-ASF (Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Adolescent Short Form) were administered prior to the experiment. Then, the experimental group was given some pieces of short literature readings with high emotional content to motivate them to think, talk, and write about their emotions. Meanwhile, the control group was assigned texts exclusive of emotional words and taught as an ordinary English writing class in China. Results revealed that students in the experimental group scored significantly higher than those in the control group on TEIQue-ASF and writing in the post-tests. There was a relatively strong positive relationship between EI and writing achievement. Implications and limitations of the study were also discussed.

Keywords:

• literature-based activities
• writing achievement
• emotional intelligence
• EFL learning