Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1. Research context 1

1.2. Significance of the study 1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1. Emotional Intelligence 2

2.2. EFL and Emotional Intelligence 3

2.3. Reading comprehension and Emotional Intelligence 3

3. Research question 4

4. Method 4

4.1. Participants 4

4.2. Procedures 5

4.2.1. Data Collection 5

4.2.2. Statistical Processing 5

4.3. Instruments 5

4.3.1. Reading-ability test (see Appendix 1) 5

4.3.2. Trait EI Questionnaire-Adolescent Short Form (see Appendix 2) 6

5. Results and discussion 6

6. Discussions 9

7. Implication 10

8. Limitations 11

9. Conclusion 12

10. References 13

11. Appendix 16

11.1. Appendix 1: A summary of reading comprehension tests 16

11.2. Appendix 2: TEIQue-ASF (Chinese Version) 16

1. Introduction

1.1. Research context

English is a foreign language in China, where it is used only in the classrooms or some specific situations. It is commonly recognized that inpidual’s abilities to learn foreign languages differ: some people master one foreign language easily, while others always fail in spite of every effort. Undoubtedly, language learners’ intelligence plays a critical role in their English learning. A body of studies has illustrated that rational and cognitive aspects such as memory and problem solving is the emphasis of the present educational system, and that little attention has been drawn on the importance of emotion (Fatema Shahmohamadi, 2011). It was widely believed that students who have higher scores of intelligence test, which is IQ, are usually more intelligent.

Nevertheless, EFL students’ achievement is not merely limited to the intelligence. Recently, psychologists such as Goleman, Bar-On etc focused on another aspect of intelligence, i.e. emotional intelligence (hereafter EI), and point out that this type of intelligence performs a better function than the intelligence quotient in an inpidual’s achievement, life, and education.