ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS IN EFL READING

Reading comprehension has always been one of the main concerns in the history of ELT in the Iranian context. EFL Learners at language institutes nowadays dotting the country and even at the English departments of the universities are taught about different reading strategies such as scanning and skimming, but the dilemma is they generally have numerous problems in reading L2 texts. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of systematic direct instruction of multiple metacognitive strategies in assisting EFL learners in comprehending English texts. This study also examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and metacognitive awareness in reading comprehension. A sample group of 50 EFL learners studying in Iran-Australia Institute of English in Tehran were randomly selected as the participants of the study. The participants were of both genders, aged 20 to 40 and had different English proficiency scores. An Emotional Intelligence questionnaire consisting of 16 items and a metacognitive reading strategy questionnaire with 20 items were used for data collection. Decriptive statistics and relevant inferential statistics on the SPSS software were used to analyze the data. Results showed weak positive relationship between emotional intelligence and metacognitive reading strategy use. The implications for the relevance of emotional intelligence to metacognitive awareness are discussed in this article.