Emotional Intelligence in Language Instruction in Oman: The Missing Link?

Abstract

The field of English Language Teaching (ELT) has long sought to identify traits of good language learners, in an effort to teach these traits to less successful language learners (Rubin, 1975). Emotional Intelligence has recently come to the forefront of research on language learning and teaching, and is now increasingly recognized as an important predictor of success in academic achievement in general, and success in learning a language (Goleman, 1995; Rastegar and Karami, 2013; Sucaromana, 2012). Recent years have seen a proliferation of research linking Emotional Intelligence to success in the English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Hence researchers have recommended explicit Emotional Intelligence instruction in language classrooms.

With the importance of English in today’s globalized world, and the greater need to communicate in English, fostering a student’s communicative ability is important, particularly in an EFL context like Oman. The Government of Oman has invested heavily in English language instruction, but unfortunately, the investment has not paid off. While there exists a substantial volume of research identifying possible reasons for students’ inadequate grasp of English even after years of language instruction both at the school and university levels, research linking emotional skills and language learning success in Oman is lacking. This article investigates whether a lack of Emotional Intelligence skills could be one of the reasons for the failure of students to achieve competence in English. Results from questionnaires of multiple choice and open-ended questions distributed to 60 university students at a large public university in the Sultanate of Oman show that a lack of Emotional Intelligence impacts a student’s ability to learn. The authors conclude that directly focusing on Emotional Intelligence skills in Omani university classrooms could result in improving students’ overall achievement both at university in general, and in English specifically.

Keywords

Emotional Intelligence language instruction EFL Oman university-level

Introduction

The Sultanate of Oman has seen unprecedented changes over the past 40 years, resulting in the rapid development of the infrastructure of the country. Much development has come in the form of the education system. In the past 40 years, the country has gone from having three elementary schools for male students to over 1300 schools for both male and female students today (Al-Mahrooqi, 2014). Such rapid growth has not been without challenges, and today, the country has problems producing college graduates who are competitive in the international arena.

In a country that has undergone such rapid development, it is not surprising that many university students entering institutions of higher education face stresses not previously known to them before. One of the biggest problems students in Oman face is having to cope with university classes in English. English is taught as a foreign language at Omani schools from the first grade through to grade 12. By the time students start university education, therefore, they have had a minimum of 12 years of exposure to the English language. However, despite the efforts of the Omani government to focus on English instruction, it is well-documented that students entering university are poorly prepared, and that graduating students are still woefully lacking in English skills (Al-Mahrooqi, 2012a). In fact, as explained by Al-Mahrooqi, a majority of students applying to university are only at the high beginner or lower intermediate level at the time of their application.

Some reasons previously identified for Omani students’ inadequate command of the English language include ineffective, largely teacher-centred teaching methods with a major emphasis on rote memorization (Al-Mahrooqi, 2012a); an unnecessary focus on traditional grammar instead of necessary communication skills; students’ interests not being taken into account; and a lack of any focus on study skills (Al-Mahrooqi, 2012b). It has also been established that the traditional Omani family system where male students are not used to taking care of themselves, and female students are attached to their families and, therefore, not independent enough to manage on their own (Al-Barwani and Al-Beeley, 2007) further hinders students from performing successfully at university. To date, little research exists that addresses the lack of emotional preparedness of Omani students entering university. Work such as Al-Barwani and Al-Beely’s (2007) suggests that this lack of emotional preparedness has an impact on students’ ability to excel at university.

Emotional Intelligence has been identified as an important factor that contributes to the ability of students to overcome stresses, excel in their new academic environment, and take the skills acquired during their university careers out into the working world (Zins et al., 1997). Goleman (1995) identified five components of Emotional Intelligence: self-awareness, managing emotions, motivating oneself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships. In Oman, currently, there are no studies investigating the relationship between students’ Emotional Intelligence and their academic success in general, or specifically their success in mastering English language skills.

Aims of the Study

The current study is a preliminary investigation to determine the levels of EI among undergraduate university students at a large public university in Oman. The study aims to determine whether low levels of Emotional Intelligence could contribute to students’ lack of success in language classes.

Literature Review

The idea of Emotional Intelligence was first noted in the education system with Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. In his seminal work, Frames of Mind, Gardner (1983) described intelligence as not a one-dimensional factor, but rather, as being composed of seven different varieties of intelligence, of which Emotional Intelligence is one. As described by Goleman (1995: 41), Gardner’s model pushed way beyond the ‘standard concept of IQ as a single, immutable factor’. While Gardner identified Emotional Intelligence as one of the components of intelligence in general, Goleman explained that, ‘emotional intelligence may be the single most important element in group intelligence’ (Manos, 2012: 26).

Emotional Intelligence: Definition

Mayer and Salovey initially defined Emotional Intelligence as ‘the ability to feel and sense emotions accurately, to manage emotions in the self and others, to utilize emotions to enhance thinking, and to recognize emotions’ (1990: 189). Goleman later defined Emotional Intelligence as ‘awareness toward emotions and their importance in our relationships and our lives’ (Goleman, 1995: 46), and provided five components of Emotional Intelligence: self-awareness, motivating oneself, managing emotions, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships. Goleman clarified that IQ and Emotional Intelligence are ‘not opposing competencies, but rather, separate ones’, and went on to stress the importance of fostering Emotional Intelligence in people to make them ‘more fully human’.

Mayer and Salovey later elaborated on their original definition and made it less ‘vague and impoverished’:

Emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth (1997:10).

Mayer and Salovey also explained that since the eighteenth century, psychologists have recognized the ‘three-part division of the mind into cognition (or thought), affect (including emotion), and motivation (or conation)’. They elaborated that the ‘cognitive sphere includes such functions as human memory, reasoning, judgment, and abstract thought’, and that the term ‘intelligence’ as used by psychologists, pertains to abilities such as synthesizing and distinguishing, and abilities such as engaging in ‘abstract thought’ (1997: 40). Clearly, this definition of intelligence has been noted in educational settings with its focus on cognitive skills. A focus on the affective and motivational domains, however, was initially more lacking. The 1980s and 1990s saw much research on the inclusion of affect in educational research (Oxford, 1990), and research into the relationship between affect and language learning continues to be popular today. The 1990s and early 2000s saw the inclusion of motivation in educational research. Researchers such as Dörnyei (2001) explained that without a focus on motivation, a focus on traditional intelligence was less useful.

Emotional Intelligence and Academic Success

Many students today are unprepared to face the challenges that a university environment presents to them (Tinto, 1993; Loera, 2012; Walsh-Portillo, 2012) such as difficulties integrating academically and socially, separating from familial ties, facing the academic rigours of university life, and coping with the social stresses of a new life. These factors have been previously acknowledged, and it is increasingly being recognized that Emotional Intelligence is an important factor that contributes to overall academic success.

Goleman (2001) showed that Emotional Intelligence made some individuals ‘with high intelligence less successful than those with average intelligence’ (quoted in Rastegar and Karami, 2013: 389). Other researchers who have linked Emotional Intelligence to academic performance include Parker et al., (2012), Barchard (2003) Aki (2006), and Qualter et al., (2012), to mention just a few. As Qualter et al., point out, ‘poor emotional competence amongst adolescents results in school difficulties associated with subsequent academic underachievement, such as school drop-out’ (2012: 83). In all these studies, researchers employed self-report questionnaires as their main source of data.

Clarke (2010) described the importance of Emotional Intelligence in a student’s ability to work collaboratively, and based his study on ‘the increasing evidence demonstrating relationships between emotional intelligence and social competence’ (2010: 127). Clarke concluded that Emotional Intelligence offers new avenues ‘for considering how we might best prepare students for participating in teams with a significant learning focus’ (2010: 126). In a study on Emotional Intelligence among British secondary school students, based on their self-report measure of how much Emotional Intelligence students had developed, Qualter et al., (2012) concluded that Emotional Intelligence, ‘predicts academic performance, which supports previous empirical work’ (2012: 88). Batool described a study linking Emotional Intelligence to effective leadership, and concludes that Emotional Intelligence ‘is one of the useful tools which helps a leader to judge people more clearly and closely and build a connection between people’ (Batool, 2013: 92).

Emotional Intelligence and Other Theories of Social Cognition

What is clear from the discussion thus far is the connection between Emotional Intelligence and other theories of social cognition such as Theory of Mind (ToM). Qualter et al., (2011: 437) for example, found that ‘higher order emotional knowledge, measured by ability Emotional Intelligence, is associated with advanced ToM’. Similarly, Ferguson and Austin (2010) found that there was a significant correlation between Emotional Intelligence and social-cognitive ToM. Given the strong overlap between Emotional Intelligence and empathy, attention, and cognitive control, all aspects of ToM, it would be important to investigate the relationship between ToM, Emotional Intelligence, and academic success. While this is an important avenue for future research, this is beyond the scope of this article.

Emotional Intelligence and Language Learning

A focus on Emotional Intelligence in the language classroom is not new. As Aki (2006: 68) points out, ‘It is based on a long history of research and theory in personality and social, as well as I/O psychology’. Many studies, linking Emotional Intelligence to success in language learning, however, do not refer specifically to Emotional Intelligence as a construct, but refer to components of Emotional Intelligence such as motivation (Dörnyei, 2001) and social skills (Oxford, 1990). Since the 1970s, the field has sought to find ways to create a classroom environment that lowers a student’s Affective Filter (Krashen, 1985), to motivate students, and to facilitate learner autonomy in students. One could say, then, that a focus on Emotional Intelligence, albeit indirectly, has been a central concern of the Communicative Approach to language teaching.

English Language Teaching practitioners have for long sought to identify the traits of good language learners, in an effort to teach these traits to less successful language learners. For example, Rubin (1975) and Abraham and Vann (1990) identified characteristics of good language learners, and found that they used a variety of learning strategies. The 1990s and early 2000s saw volumes of research on learning styles and strategies, with a strong emphasis on students’ acquisition of affective and metacognitive strategies in addition to cognitive strategies. Based on the definitions of Emotional Intelligence provided thus far, it is clear that affective and metacognitive strategies are used by an emotionally intelligent student, who is capable of handling social relationships, and is capable of independent learning. Rastegar and Karami focused on the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and strategy use and noted that there is a ‘considerable relationship between EI and language learning strategies’ (Rastegar and Karami, 2013: 390). They concluded that it is imperative that English teachers become more familiar with the construct of Emotional Intelligence and ‘raise the students’ awareness about the constructs’ (2013: 393) in order to help them become more strategic language learners.

Motivation, one of the components of Emotional Intelligence, has also been identified as a major factor in determining language learning success (Dörnyei, 2001). Gardner and Lambert (1972) noted that language learning aptitude was not the only determining factor of language learning success. They stressed that achieving competence in a second or foreign language is enhanced by the ability of a learner to be open to, and adopt behaviour patterns which are characteristic of the target culture.

Recent studies focus directly on Emotional Intelligence. For example, in a study linking Emotional Intelligence with achievement in reading comprehension in English as a Foreign Language (Abdolrezapour and Tavakoli, 2012), the authors concluded that, ‘in order to have more efficient and effective language instruction, language centers need to encourage teachers to use instructional techniques that raise EFL learners’ EI’ (2012: 11). Motallebzadeh and Azizi (2012) concluded that there is a ‘significant and positive relationship’ between the Emotional Intelligence and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) performance. Shao et al., (2013) showed that Emotional Intelligence not only links to success in particular language learning tasks, but in general, decreases students’ foreign language anxiety. Similarly, Sucaromana (2012) stressed the need for language teachers to ‘improve emotional intelligence’ and thereby ‘create a more effective learning atmosphere for language learning and teaching’ (2012: 54).

English Language Instruction in Oman

Globalization and the rapid spread of English and its firm establishment as the major lingua franca have had major impacts on EFL contexts such as the Sultanate of Oman. Recognizing the need for its citizens to be competitive in an increasingly competitive global market, the Government of Oman has heavily invested in English language instruction at all levels. As described by Al-Mahrooqi (2012b), English ‘is an essential instrument for the country’s integration into the rest of the world’ (2012b: 125). Al-Mahrooqi further explained that with this focus on English language competence for the Omani graduate, ‘most Omani higher education institutions, public and private, teach all their science-based majors in English. They also teach many specializations in the humanities (e.g. education and the arts) in it’ (2012b: 125).

It is, however, also widely acknowledged that this investment in English instruction has not yielded the expected and necessary results. Al-Mahrooqi (2012b) explained that ‘A majority of public school leavers lack the linguistic and communicative skills required for their future academic or professional success’ (2012b: 125). Al-Mahrooqi (2012a) further claimed that ‘Research and experience have proved that the majority of school and college graduates possess neither adequate English language skills nor communication skills to function effectively in the workplace, which is dominated by expatriates from around the world’ (2012a: 124).

Not surprisingly, therefore, why current teaching practices have not yielded more positive results has been researched from many perspectives. These include student perceptions of why their English communication skills are inadequate (Al-Mahrooqi, 2012a); how English communication skills are taught (Al-Mahrooqi, 2012b); and analysis of the motivational strategies used by EFL teachers in Oman (Al-Mahrooqi et al., 2012) among others. This last study is worth mentioning here because of its inherent connection to Omani students’ Emotional Intelligence. The study revealed that ‘EFL teachers in Oman overwhelmingly endorse the use of 48 motivational strategies’ (2012: 36). While this might seem positive on the surface, the authors showed that the strategies regarded as least important were those related to the development of students’ metacognitive abilities, or strategies that would contribute to students’ overall autonomy. Many of these underused strategies deal with students taking responsibility for their own learning, understanding the learning process, and in general, being interested in the target language, the culture, and the learning process. A focus on such metacognitive strategies would contribute to a student’s Emotional Intelligence.

The direct connection between Emotional Intelligence and student success in Omani universities has, to our knowledge, not been widely studied to date. This brief review of relevant literature points to the important connection between Emotional Intelligence and academic success in general, and language learning success in particular, and suggests the importance of focusing on Emotional Intelligence in the curricula of school and university classes in Oman.

Methodology

Participants

Participants for this study included eight male and 52 female Omani students of English language and literature registered for various classes in the English Department at a large public university in Oman. This uneven distribution of males to females is typical of most courses in English Departments in Oman. Most of the students were 19–21 years of age and the majority were in the third year of their undergraduate university programme. The average GPA of the students was in the B-C range. Given that this GPA reflects the students’ performance in all their university subjects (as opposed to just English), no further comment will be made here on academic performance. This, however, should be investigated further in a future study. Further studies should also include a larger sample size.

Omani students differ from other students in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in that their official and primary language is Arabic, but some students are bilingual as many have ancestral roots in Iran and Zanzibar. Thus students often speak Jabbali, Swahili, Balochi, Kumzari and other languages or dialects. Participants differed in their proficiency of English, but no language level test or pre- and post-test was administered prior to the study. It was assumed that students’ proficiency in English would be somewhat similar, given that all of them had studied the language for the same number of years.

Omani university students typically use English in the context of their classes, and rarely find opportunities to use it in other settings. This is particularly true of female students, most of whom live in residences on campus. While the male students do live off campus, it is not typical for them to find opportunities to use English outside of class.

Instrument

In keeping with most other studies on Emotional Intelligence, the current study used a self-report questionnaire as a primary data source. Based on Goleman’s ideas, Connell (2005) developed a questionnaire which included five components of Emotional Intelligence: self awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills; these terms closely mirror those described by Goleman (1995). For the current study, Connell’s questionnaire was modified to be relevant to the current context, and a few items were added to each of her dimensions of Emotional Intelligence. The items included in all five categories are provided in Table 1. In addition to the five sections outlined by Connell, the current questionnaire included 11 open-ended questions designed to determine whether the students perceived themselves to be emotionally intelligent, whether their English classes helped them foster Emotional Intelligence skills, what they thought would help promote their Emotional Intelligence skills, and what they thought could be done to help them better deal with the rigours of university life. The questionnaire was distributed to the 60 undergraduate students described in the section above during the first part of a class period. The questionnaire was distributed only in English, as it was assumed, given the level of the students’ English, that they would have no trouble completing the questions. Further, the instructor of the class was present while students were filling out the questionnaire, and addressed any language problems that students had.

Table 1.

Student 1’s Responses to Emotional Intelligence Statements.

EI Theme	EI Statement	Yes		No
EI Theme	EI Statement	#	%	#	%
Self –Aware-ness	1. I am aware of what and how I am feeling most of the time.	48	80%	12	20%
	2. I know that I have weaknesses; I am usually able to admit when I have made a mistake.	57	95%	3	5%
	3. I know that I have strengths; I am usually able to feel good with myself when I have accomplished a goal or completed a good deed.	59	98%	1	2%
	4. People would say that I have a ‘presence’.	44	73%	16	27%
	5. I am good at advising my classmates and friends.	50	83%	10	17%
Self-Regulation	1. I am organized and careful in my work for my classes.	48	80%	12	20%
	2. I make new goals for myself to learn better, and I hold myself accountable for meeting them.	48	80%	12	20%
	3. Generally speaking, my teachers trust me to do what I say I am going to do.	50	83%	10	17%
	4. In class, I often come up with new solutions to solve problems.	23	38%	37	62%
	5. If there is a conflict between students in class, I rise to the occasion by staying calm and positive, and try to find a way to solve the problem.	39	65%	21	35%
	6. I believe taking risks helps me to learn, and I have no trouble taking risks in class.	40	67%	20	33%
	7. I am always eager to contribute in class.	36	60%	24	40%
Motiv-ation	1. I work hard to do the best I can for my classes.	45	75%	15	25%
	2. I frequently think about new and interesting ways to learn.	50	83%	10	17%
	3. I believe that I will be successful in most of my university projects.	52	87%	8	13%
	4. I actively support the initiatives and mission of my university.	26	43%	34	57%
	5. I constantly look for new ways to improve my learning.	55	92%	5	8%
	6. I work hard because I believe that what I am learning is important.	53	88%	7	12%
	7. I work hard because I don’t want to get bad grades.	55	92%	5	8%
Emp-athy	1. I play an active role in class to encourage productivity among other students and promote positive emotional growth.	22	37%	38	63%
	2. I work hard to understand how other students are feeling, and look for ways to help other students feel comfortable.	34	57%	26	43%
	3. I try to listen carefully to other students’ opinions in class, even if those opinions are different from mine.	56	93%	4	7%
	4. I don’t bother to listen to students whose opinions I disagree with.	46	77%	14	23%
	5. I believe that I can learn from someone whose opinions and beliefs are very different from mine.	57	95%	3	5%
	6. I am able to sense the mood of other students in class.	50	83%	10	17%
	7. I enjoy group or pair work in class because I view it as a chance to help other students.	44	73%	16	27%
Social Skills	1. I frequently take a leadership role in group work in my classes.	33	55%	27	45%
	2. If I am working in a group and there is disagreement between other group members, I quickly act to mediate.	39	65%	21	35%
	3. I am quick to cultivate good and supportive relationships with other students.	44	73%	16	27%
	4. I listen to others’ points of view, but make strong efforts to assert my point of view as well.	52	87%	8	13%
	5. I work hard to initiate change in my classes if I see a need.	38	63%	22	37%

Results: Yes/No Items

Table 1 presents the results obtained from the students’ responses to the five Emotional Intelligence categories. Below is a discussion of results from the five Emotional Intelligence categories followed by a discussion of the results from the open-ended questions.

Self-Awareness

Most of the students surveyed did not have a problem with Self-Awareness, based on their responses to the questionnaire items. Eighty percent or more of the respondents responded affirmatively to four of the statements (1, 2, 3, and 5), with most of the respondents acknowledging that they are aware of their strengths (59 out of 60) and weaknesses (57 out of 60). Sixteen of the 60 (27%) students responded negatively to statement 4. These results suggest that students perceived themselves to be self-aware.

Self-Regulation

The results showed that students perceived themselves to be less self-regulated than self-aware. Negative responses to the statements ranged from 17% (statement 3) to 62% (statement 4). With the other statements, as seen in Table 7, 20%, 33%, 35%, and 40% of the students responded negatively. These results suggest that many of the students are not self-regulated; they seem to lack the necessary autonomy and independence to achieve academic success. In today’s language classroom, research shows that active student participation and learner autonomy are essential to language learning success (Nunan, 1988). It would seem, then, that students who lacked self-regulation skills would be less successful in their language learning endeavours.

These results concur with those presented by Al-Mahrooqi et al., (2012), on a lack of focus on students’ metacognitive skills. As mentioned earlier, it is possible that developing students’ metacognitive strategies, would contribute to students being more self-regulated. The results also support Al-Barwani and Al-Beely’s (2007) views that when students enter university, they are typically not independent enough to manage on their own.

Motivation

The results to these statements suggest that students perceived themselves as motivated. The two statements that had the most affirmative responses (55 of the 60 students) were statements 5 and 7, followed by statements 3 and 6. Affirmative responses to two other questions were fewer in number: 50 of the 60 students responded positively to statement 1 and 45 of the 60 students responded in the affirmative to statement 2. Interestingly, statement 7 had the most negative responses, with 34 of the 60 students, (57%) responding negatively. These results suggest that a lack of motivation did not contribute to the hardships they faced (as described in the open-ended questions discussed below).

Empathy

Of the seven statements in this category, students responded in the affirmative to five (statements 3–7). Statements 1 and 2, however, were different. These two remaining statements dealt with helping other students in the classroom. Forty-three percent and 63% of the students reported that they neither worked hard to understand and help other students feel comfortable, nor did they encourage productivity among other students. Clark (2010) showed that there is a strong relationship between a student’s Emotional Intelligence and their social competence. Based on the results of the current study, it seems essential, therefore, to focus on helping students develop their social skills. It is also possible that many students responded negatively to statement 4 in the previous section (motivation: ‘I actively support the initiatives and mission of my university’) because of a lack of social skills. A development of their social skills, therefore, could lead to producing students who are more invested in their education, and therefore, play a more active role in it.

Social Skills

Perhaps not surprisingly, based on the results obtained in the previous two categories, this component of Emotional Intelligence received the most negative responses from students in general, with 13-45% of the students responding negatively to each statement. These results suggest that leadership skills are not among their perceived strengths. The results obtained here concur with what Clarke (2010) explained about the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and team work.

While the results of the multiple choice items on the questionnaire described above suggest that students’ Emotional Intelligence was lacking in the areas of self-regulation, empathy, and social skills, the students’ responses to the open-ended questions reveal more clearly that a lack of Emotional Intelligence, and a lack of focus on emotional skills in any of their language classes, do, indeed, hinder their abilities to perform well academically.

Results: Open-ended Questions

The open-ended questions focused on students’ perceptions about whether they felt emotionally prepared to deal with university life, and then specifically, whether their English classes played a role in helping them cope with their emotional difficulties, particularly during their first year of university life. Certain themes emerged from all the students’ responses, and these are described below, with example student responses for each theme.

Theme 1: Students’ Inability to Take Care of Themselves

A theme that ran through all the participants’ open-ended questions was an inability to take care of themselves when they first came to university. This is in keeping with what Al-Barwani and Al-Beely (2007) described in their study on Omani students. Students expressed that they were used to their families taking care of them, and that getting used to their families not being available to do so was a source of consternation. Some specific student comments to this end include the following (please note that student language has not been corrected):

We came from a high school which deals with us as a family so it takes care of us. However, when we come to the university, we face a lot of problems.

I was not independent in making hard decisions, I also found that to live far away from my family is hard. The hardest thing for me was time management; I cannot divide my time for studying, eating, entertainment, and whatever.

Family always directed me and gave me solutions. Family couldn’t help me so much in the university.

Not all students are emotionally prepared. It depends on how the student grew up. Some of us are very responsible, and others are not because they used to have everything easily.

Theme 2: Inability to Deal with Other People

Many students complained about an inability to deal with other people, and in particular, people of the opposite gender. These comments support the findings described earlier about the students’ lack of social skills. Some student responses also pointed directly to an inability to deal with people from other regions of Oman:

The main obstacle during my first year was dealing with the other gender. Also, another problem was that I met different students who live in the different regions of Oman. So I had to deal with them carefully.

I did not like my roommate because her lifestyle, customs and her personality are very different for me.

I couldn’t make friends easily; there are too many different girls from different regions and it was really hard for us to communicate.

The professors should explain the reasons for low grades to the students to help them because students don’t like to talk or ask someone for help.

Theme 3: Difficulty of University Classes

Another theme included being surprised at how much more difficult university classes were compared to those at high school:

Classes and tests were difficult. The system of grading was difficult.

Before I joined SQU I thought I was ready to study there because I thought it is similar to the schools. Immediately after I joined, I discovered that there is a huge difference between schools and SQU.

The majority of students think that SQU is as easy as schools, but they immediately are astonished by the different system at SQU.

Honestly there is a gap and no connectivity between schools and the university. I am sure that one of the schools’ goals is to prepare students for the university, but we haven’t reached that yet.

I did not imagine that life at SQU needs harder work to succeed.

Theme 4: Emotional Intelligence Training in Schools Prior to Entering University

When asked what could be done to help students better, most students said they needed more information about university life, and strategies to cope with university life earlier. Their responses suggest that Emotional Intelligence training in schools is essential.

Help us to be confident to face the problems and not to be shy asking for anything or asking for help.

Improve the performance of schools and encourage and support some programmes that aim to solve the students’ problems.

It is the schools’ responsibility to prepare students emotionally.

High school should prepare students very well before they enter the university. They should train the students with different kinds of skills of how to deal with academic university life.

The university should provide schools with the basic information about the rigours of academic life.

Discussion and Conclusion

The results of this study suggest that while students seem self-aware and motivated, a lack of self-regulation, empathy, and social skills seems to have an impact on their academic and language learning successes. The results of the current study suggest that language teachers need to focus directly on developing certain components of their students’ Emotional Intelligence. As mentioned earlier, this is a preliminary exploratory study on the possibility of a link between students’ lack of Emotional Intelligence and their lack of success in their English language classes. Based on these preliminary results, further studies should explore specifically the strength of the correlation between students’ performance in their English classes (based on measures such as their GPAs in English courses) and poor Emotional Intelligence skills.

Much research points to the need for English instruction in Oman to be reevaluated. This article suggests that one way to address this need is to better address the emotional needs of students. One of the central tenets of Communicative Language Teaching is creating a comfortable learning environment by focusing on the needs of the learners. As early as the 1980s, Steven Krashen talked about the Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashen, 1985), in which he described that, in part, creating a comfortable learning environment could lower a student’s Affective Filter, and thereby lower their anxiety, increase their motivation, and enable them to be better learners. For decades now, language teaching professionals have focused on these ideas and formulated ways for their students to be more successful. While many researchers have written about focusing specifically on learner needs, other scholars have focused on how to motivate students, and still others have focused on how to better students’ social skills and facilitate their use of affective strategies; all these issues are directly linked to Emotional Intelligence.

As mentioned earlier, the ideas embodied in Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence are not new; his five components of Emotional Intelligence have been discussed, even within the language classroom, in many different ways. The current study suggests that in Oman, Emotional Intelligence needs to be dealt with more directly; students need to have Emotional Intelligence training, and we suggest that this be done in the language classroom. An examination of Connell’s (2005) lessons that incorporate Emotional Intelligence instruction into them, what she termed ‘An Emotional Intelligence Lesson’ shows that there is nothing in this lesson that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) practitioners have not, for years, been talking about. As illustrated by Connell, direct Emotional Intelligence instruction can fit neatly into today’s communicative classroom if it is treated as part of the content to be taught. That this is not being done, and why this is not being done, when it seems natural to do so, are factors worthy of further investigation in the Omani context. It is clear that the EFL teacher in Oman needs to take onboard the responsibility for incorporating Emotional Intelligence instruction into their EFL classes.

Limitations

This study is a preliminary investigation of levels of Emotional Intelligence among university students in Oman, and sought only to determine whether a lack of Emotional Intelligence skills could contribute to poor language learning ability among students. Results of the current study suggest that a lack of Emotional Intelligence is, indeed, a problem, and that fostering Emotional Intelligence directly in language instruction could help students be more successful in their language classroom. This study did not attempt to correlate students’ levels of Emotional Intelligence with their achievement (or lack, thereof) in their English classes. This should be the focus of a future study. Further, this study did not determine whether students’ Emotional Intelligence improved between the first year of their university careers and their final year of university study. In a future study, it would be important to determine this with a larger sample size of students.

Another possible limitation of the study is that the questionnaire was provided to students only in English, and not in Arabic. It is possible that this affected the students’ ability to respond in sufficient detail to some of the questions. In a future study, it would be important to give students the choice of language in which to respond to the questions.

Another limitation of the current study is that it did not seek to explore other theories of social cognition such as Theory of Mind despite their relevance to Emotional Intelligence. Future explorations need to delve into ways in which aspects of Emotional Intelligence relate to or overlap with Theory of Mind, and therefore, the relationship between other theories of social cognition and language learning success.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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