Willingness to communicate and its relationship with emotional intelligence and gender differences

Abstract

As a matter of fact, contemporary universal education gives prominence on authentic communication as an ultimate goal of language learning. Language teaching and learning processes are among the most important and complex human endeavors which is the result of the complicated nature of human beings. Therefore, a successful language learner is the one who is capable of dealing with complexities of teaching-learning processes. Various recent learner-fronted teaching methodologies have underscored the notion of learner-initiated communication which is known as willingness to communicate (WTC). To date, various variables have been discovered by scholars to be influential in the satisfactory flow of communication among students in the language classrooms. Another variable analyzed in the present study is the potential relationship between learners' gender and WTC as well as their emotional intelligence (EQ-i). Therefore, the present study tries to investigate the possible go-togetherness between learners' willingness to communicate and their emotional intelligence. Two questionnaires of Bar-On's (1997) emotional quotient inventory and McCrosky's (1992) willingness to communicate scale were administered to a total of 100 academic EFL learners. After obtaining the raw data, the SPSS software (version17) was used to change the data into numerical interpretable forms. Correlation analysis revealed that there is positive correlation between learner’s willingness to communicate and their emotional intelligence level. Furthermore, the findings characterized females as the outperforming group both in terms of emotional intelligence and willingness to communicate.