Impact of Teaching Critical Thinking Skills on Reading Comprehension of Students across Different Emotional Intelligence Levels

The major aim of this study was to examine the effect of teaching critical thinking skills on Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension across different EQ levels. To this end, 104 students were selected. Then the participants were randomly divided into two groups. In the next step, Bar-On Emotional Intelligences test was administered to measure the participants EQ level and based on their scores on this test, the subjects of each group were divided into two subgroups. During 14 sessions, critical thinking skills were taught to the students of the experimental group along with their ordinary English courses. Finally, another version of the reading comprehension test was given to the participants to test the effect of the treatment. The obtained data were analyzed using t-test and one-way ANOVA. The results revealed that teaching critical thinking skills had a significant positive effect on reading comprehension of the students. The second purpose of the study was to find out if there was any relationship between the learners’ EQ and their reading comprehension. The results revealed no meaningful relationship between EQ and reading comprehension. The final purpose of the study investigated that if the subjects’ EQ level had any significant effect on using critical thinking skills in the class or not. The results showed that students with higher EQ levels could benefit from critical thinking skills in their reading comprehension more effectively than the lower EQ group.