Abstract:

Recent research has demonstrated that emotional intelligence could have a greater impact on academic performance than actual theoretical knowledge (Goleman, 2014). Moreover, public education in the French-speaking part of Switzerland aims to transmit social values, such as the development of a child’s balanced personality and the development of their sense of responsibility. These concepts are explained in the French-speaking regional curriculum, the Plan d’Etude Romand (PER, 2024), and are developed through the areas of general education and transversal competencies. Practitioners have thus a responsibility to teach children various emotional skills, such as identifying and differentiating emotions, as well as emotional regulation strategies. Given that learning a foreign language can trigger a range of emotions, how can emotional intelligence help children overcome their negative emotions and promote their positive ones in the language classroom? What tools can teachers use to foster the development of students' emotional skills to cope with emotions related to the learning of a foreign language? The present paper reports on the drafting of a teaching sequence that promotes the development of emotional competence in young adolescents: the identification, understanding, expression, and regulation of FLA, boredom, enjoyment, and motivation when learning a foreign language. The large-scale follow-up on this pilot phase will evaluate the potential impact of this teaching sequence on the development of children's emotional competencies when learning a foreign language.

Keywords:

Emotional Intelligence (EI), Foreign Language (Lx), Secondary Education, Scheme of Work, English as a Foreign Language (EFL).