Exploring the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement among EFL Learners

الملخص

Summary:

     The current  study aims at investigating the relationship between the emotional intelligence and the academic achievement among EFL students. The researcher has adapted a questionnaire to measure the students' emotional intelligence and then find out its relation with their academic achievement based on the final average of the students for first course. A quantitative correlational research design was implemented. An emotional intelligence questionnaire measuring five dimensions—self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills—was used to gather data from EFL university students. The Grade Point Average (GPA) of the students was used to gauge their academic performance. The association between academic achievement and emotional intelligence was examined using the Pearson correlation coefficient. The results showed a very weak positive correlation (r = 0.224) between academic achievement and emotional intelligence. Self-awareness had the strongest link with GPA among the emotional intelligence categories, but Motivation ,Social skill  and Self-regulation showed very weak direct link. Whereas Empathy showed no correlation. The findings showed  that among EFL learners, emotional intelligence is not a reliable indicator of academic achievement. In conclusion, emotional intelligence may support self-awareness in classroom interaction, motivation and communication but it doesn't seem to have a significant direct impact  on academic achievement. The study suggests doing more research with bigger sample sizes and examining  other factors like motivation,  language anxiety, and  learning techniques.