Emotional Intelligence and Its Relevance to Foreign Language Students Anxiety

Many studies have been conducted on anxiety in EFL classroom settings and also on individual's Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills in a variety of situations. The major purpose of this study was to assess if there were any specific relationships between Iranian EFL learners’ EI skills (such as interpersonal, intrapersonal and stress –management) and their anxiety level. Participants of the study were 152 EFL college students, both males and females, who were selected randomly among freshmen and sophomores in Islamic Azad University -Tabriz. The researcher utilized two questionnaires to collect the required data in order to determine the level of foreign language classroom anxiety and emotional intelligence skills. The first questionnaire was Horwitz's foreign language classroom anxiety scale (FLCAS) and the second one was Bar-on's Emotional Intelligence test. Based on the quantitative findings of this study, it was found that there exited a significant correlation between foreign language learning anxiety and emotional intelligence skills in total. It was also found there were significant negative correlations among all the selected sub skills of EI in this study, except between interpersonal relationships and anxiety. It was also noted that the difference of anxiety mean scores between EFL male and female participants was not significant. Based on results of this study, the difference of EI mean scores between EFL males and females was not significant, except the sub skills "stress-management, self-actualization and stress – tolerance", in which there was a significant EI difference means scores.