EFL teachers’ affective competencies and their relationships with the students

Abstract

A number of investigators highlight the affective competencies of teachers explaining that they directly impact student learning (Olson and Wyett in Education, 120:741–74, 2000). A lack of affective skills can be detectable in many educators and a teacher cannot be considered effective if he or she ignores the affective domains (Aydın et al. in Anadolu University Journal of Social Sciences, 9:263–280, 2009). Affective teaching should underscore the superior role of emotions in order to enhance reasoning and enrich students’ integrative qualities (Zhang and Lu in International Journal of Psychological Studies, 1:35–41, 2009). Undesirable emotions may impede gaining new knowledge, therefore more insight into the significance of emotional literacy appears to be indispensable. This study examines the relationship between the level of emotional intelligence (EI) of foreign language teachers and their success in terms of classroom interaction. Moreover, the importance and value of a positive teacher-student relationship is investigated. For this purpose, 20 secondary school teachers of the English language together with their students (493) in Częstochowa were chosen. Initially, the teachers were asked to take a test on emotional intelligence (TIE 1.0 test). Simultaneously, a questionnaire was completed by each student with the aim of evaluating the students’ attitude towards a given teacher and 4 selected teachers were interviewed (2 presenting a high level of emotional intelligence and 2 presenting a low level of the concept in question). The results indicate that a teacher with a higher level of EI has a much better relationship with students, which in turn results in an emotionally friendly environment where students are able to acquire their knowledge in a faster way.