Investigating Competitive Forces of Emotions and Intellects in Academic Performance of Iranian Adult EFL Learners

To testify the contrastive properties of two combinations of Emotional Intelligence (EI) index including emotional vs. cognitive subscale dyads among one hundred and twenty university students (52 male & 68 female), this study was carried out to predict their success in their General English (GE) course during one academic semester. Datasets were obtained through a self-report Bar-On’s EI Questionnaire (1977) and mapped over the participants' academic linguistic performance through Discriminant Function Analyses (DFA) techniques within two successive phases: In the first phase, the statistical results revealed that, overall, Wilks's Lambda was significant: ᴧ= .000, ᵡ2 (2, N= 120) = .000, p<.001. This indicated that the two predictors could differentiate between the two groups of success/non-success. In the second phase, in order to verify which combinatory subscale dyads of EI (cognitive vs. emotional) could predict success in either of success vs. non-success groups, the results obtained through Fishers' linear discriminant function was used which showed EI emotional set involving two 'assertiveness' and 'self-awareness' factors could better predict success in non-success compared with success group. Finally, possible pedagogical implications of considering university students' EI indices and their language learning as a social practice were discussed for teaching English at tertiary levels.