Investigating The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence And Test-taking Anxiety In Foreign Language Learners' Classes

Résumé: Seeing how important tests and exams are in the student's life, and that they can determine his career and future, we can understand how exams cause a great deal of anxiety for the students. This Test-Taking Anxiety (TTA) hinders the student's academic performance and can even harm him physically. Several researchers suggested many variables that can be a potential solution to the issue at hand. Among them, we shed light on Emotional Intelligence (EI) which has the four pillars that are: being aware of the emotions, managing and controlling the emotions, being aware of other's emotions, and the ability to communicate with others effectively. Using a correlation research, we tested the hypothesis that claims that there is a relationship between EI and TTA. We used two different tests to measure EI and TTA: Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT) and Sarason Test Anxiety Questionnaire. We worked with two groups of 1st year EFL students of English department at Larbi Ben Mhidi University. After gathering the data using the two tests of EI and TTA, we analyzed the data using SPSS. We found that there is a significant negative relationship between EI and TTA. That is to say, the higher the EI, the less TTA is. So we confirmed the research hypothesis.

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