Innovative strategies to develop emotional intelligence of students in english language teaching

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Innovative strategies to develop emotional intelligence of students in english language teaching

Semenchenko T.O.,

Shevchenko V.I.,

Cherniavska I.S.

The article deals with the content of emotional intelligence in terms of teaching English as a foreign language, as well as the factors that hinder its development: socio-economic, political and psychological ones. The basic facilitation strategies for the development of emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creativity in learning a foreign language are characterized, namely ice breakers, warmers role-plays, group project work, discussions, brainstorming and others. Attention is drawn to the fact that random grouping of students for mingling activities positively affects creation of a supportive microclimate in the group, building friendships, fulfils a learning function and develops critical thinking, as students have to perform certain language tasks in order to be divided into groups or pairs. The best ways to randomly group students are highlighted: linear (students form a growing line according to a particular criterion, and then the teacher forms pairs / groups) and direct (students have to perform a certain logical and linguistic task and are subsequently grouped by a certain criterion). The article outlines the modern language activities for the development of emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creativity in the course of development of reading skills (critical assessment of the reading text with subsequent independent search for answers as for dubious or missing information and writing reviews), speaking (exercises “Balderdash", “Call by bluff', “Hide the word", “Evolving a story", “Where do you live?'', “Don't say No", “Excuse me, but and made a mistake"), writing (exercise “Add colors"). The ways of working with the functional language in the context of fostering emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creativity of students are considered.

Key words: emotional intelligence, critical thinking, creativity, English language teaching, strategies to develop emotional intelligence.

У статті розглянуто зміст емоційного інтелекту крізь призму навчання англійської мови як іноземної', а також фактори, що перешкоджають його розвитку: соц/ально- економічні, політичні та зумовлені ними психологічні. Схарактеризовано основні фасилітативні стратегії розвитку емоційного інтелекту, критичного мислення і кре- ативності під час навчання іноземної мови, а саме: айс-брейкери, вормери, рольові-ігри, групова проектна робота, дискусії, мозковий штурм тощо. Закцентовано увагу на тому, що випадкове групування студентів для (mingling activities) позитивно впливає на створення доброзичливого мікроклімату в групі, побудові дружніх відносин, виконує навчальну функцію та розвиває критичне мислення, оскільки студенти мають виконати певні мовні завдання, розподіляючись на групи або пари. Висвітлено передові способи випадкового групування студентів: лінійний (студенти формують зростаючу лінію за відповідною ознакою, а потім викладач формує пари / групи) та безпосередній (студенти мають виконати певне логіко- мовне завдання й опинитися в групах чи парах за відповідним критерієм). Презентовано новітні види діяльності на заняттях з іноземної' мови для розвитку емоційного інтелекту, критичного мислення та креа- тивності під час паралельного формування навичок читання (критична оцінка прочитаного тексту за складанням питань до невисвітлених чи суперечливих положень тексту із подальшим самостійним пошуком відповідей на ці питання та написанням відгуку на текст із підручника), говоріння (вправи «Нісенітниця», «Неправда», «Сховай слово», «Створи історію», «Де ти живеш?», «Не кажи - ні», «Вибачте, але Ви зробили помилку»), письма (вправа «Додай кольору»). Розглянуто способи відпрацювання функціональної мови у контексті формування емоційного інтелекту, критичного мислення та творчості студентів.

Ключові слова: емоційний інтелект, критичне мислення, креативність, навчання англійської мови, способи розвитку емоційного інтелекту.

Problem statement in general

In order to survive and thrive into a complex and connected world of nowadays students have to develop essential 21^st century skills, among which are emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creativity. In the meanwhile, a great deal of learners in higher education come to classes with invisible bags weighted with struggles, stress, worry, fear, anxiety, unmet expectations, loneliness, anger, sadness, and hopelessness that make them so heavy, too heavy for learning to happen, but still desperately in search of a sense of identity, safety and value. In this way, institutions and teachers are responsible for fostering: attachment - a sense of belonging to the school or university, reassurance - that others experience difficulties, bonding - facilitating the formation of friendships, training - in study skills, time management and stress reduction. In the language classroom, all the above apply and in addition, the teacher needs to focus on areas of language used to express emotions, and on classroom techniques which will reduce tension and produce better group dynamics [1].

Analysis of recent research and publications. The issue of the emotional intelligence in foreign language learning and teaching was studied by Goleman D., Lynn A., Schilling D., Darn S. and others. Darn S. emphasizes that EI is developed through activities which promote the sharing of ideas and communication in the classroom, such as:

a) a variety of activities maintains interest and allows for different approaches to learning and individual learning styles;

b) ice breakers, warmers and mingle activities help students get to know each other and promote interest in lessons if they are related to the topic area.

c) brainstorming and discussion encourages the sharing of knowledge and opinions.

d) for some learners, it is easier to reveal themselves via a fictitious role.

e) group work encourages cooperation. Group composition should be changed often since there is a tendency for high EQ students to work together, but EQ can be also learned by example. Tasks should be designed so that all members have to contribute and have the same outcome [1].

Ukrainian educators (Havran M.I., Shuyan T.V., Moskalenko I.V., Ishenko O.V. and others) paid close attention to ways of fostering emotional intelligence and hence creativity and critical thinking of students of non-linguistic specialties in the course of teaching English. However, everyday leading Ukrainian methodologists and Oxford University Press, Pearson and Dinternal Education, Cambridge University Press consultants elaborate strategies to advocate the competences in question and they have to be summarized.

Aim of the article. The article aims to outline the innovative activities to develop emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creativity of university students in the course of teaching English as a foreign language.

Presenting main material

James D. Dunn suggests developing critical thinking while working with the texts for reading, i.e. as students go through the reading, they should write down questions concerning dubious or missing information or comments they have about the article in general [2]. The methodologist considers the extract from the textbook reading text about the small talk and shows the type of questions students could come up with (in square brackets below).

Research suggests that small talk can build new friendships. [What research? What scientists?] So, how can you make small talk lead to a new relationship, job, or promotion? First off, find common ground. Select something around you that you share with the other person. At the job interview, look around the room for common interests. [like desks? plants? what?] Perhaps the interviewer has a photo of his children on his desk. “Oh, you have kids, too?” you might ask. [I don't have kidsI am a university stu

dent. What could I find in common?]. ...Next, keep the conversation going. Compliment the other person to make him feel comfortable, and ask questions to show interest. [Compliments make me feel odd. Am I strange?] Don't do all the talking and avoid saying anything offensive. [What topics are offensive?]. Third, maintain eye contact. [Wait, is this true in all countries around the world?]

Subsequently, students have a chance to go online and look up the answers to their questions and record where information comes from. As soon as students are ready with their findings, they should write a reaction to the text. Depending on their level, they can use multiple sources of information and combine sources to synthesize information and justify their opinion with more than feelings.

Michelioudakis N. puts forward the ideas that can be used for numerous topics and fields, take very little time, are enjoyable and extremely flexible [4].

Balderdash! Students work in groups. The teacher gives them some very difficult words related to a field the class has been studying. Each group produces a made up, but believable definitions for each of the words and hands it to the teacher. The teacher then reads out the REAL answer and all the made-up answers, in random order. The groups need to guess which is actually correct. Teams score points for each group who are conned into believing that their made-up answer is the real one, as well as for choosing the real and often unbelievable answer. Alternatively, students can work in pairs and provide one real and one fake definition to a partner.

Call my bluff. Students work in pairs or groups of three. Students come up with false definitions or examples of the target vocabulary, their partners have to correct the mistakes. For example, if Student A says, `If you withdraw some money from an ATM, you deposit your account', so Student B must say, “No, because if you do so, you deduct money from your account”.

Hide the Word. Students work in pairs, taking turns. Student A thinks of a word from the target vocabulary, and writes it down on a paper without showing to his partner. Then he speaks for 20-30 seconds using other difficult words from the target vocabulary and uses the word he had thought of at least once. Student B tries to guess which word it is.

The evolving story. Students work in pairs. Student A thinks about the beginning of a story (I was getting ready for my presentation... I was on my way to... I was working on my..) - about 3-4 sentences long. Student B writes down some words - completely unrelated to each other (could be from the target vocab). Student A starts his/ her story, and after 3-4 sentences, Student B calls out one of his /her words. Student A continues the story, but has to incorporate it into the story - taking it in a totally different direction. For example,

A: Yesterday, I packed my things and got ready to go to work. I was walking down the street when I saw a friend... B: Cash!

A: He was counting the cash on the bench. There were many people around, I went closer -1 was really surprised ...B: Weird!

A: I thought it was so weird, what on earth was he doing there. B: Jump

A: I told him that he should jump up, touch the wood, hide his money and get home.

Color in the Passage. Students get the paragraph without the adjectives OR the gaps and we asked them to add some color to it (`What is the puppy like?' / `What is the bed like?' / `How was the puppy feeling?').

`One day, my puppy jumped onto our couch and played with his toy. I liked to watch him play - he looked so full of life. Soon, my puppy yawned. He was a puppy - he tired easily. I picked him up and laid him on his bed. Soon my puppy was snoring away'.

Students might then come up with something like this: `One day, my lovely puppy jumped onto our long, comfortable couch and played with his new, stuffed toy. I liked to watch him play - he looked so excited and care-free, so happy and full of life. Soon, my cute puppy yawned. He was a young puppy - he tired easily. I picked him up and laid him on his cosy, warm bed. Soon my adorable little puppy was snoring away'.

Pazyak E. and Taranenko H. in the conference “21 skills for 21 century”, dated fall 2019, showed the activity called “Where do you live?”. The idea is that students, working in pairs, ask each other in turns the same question several times, and every time they have to come up with a different response until they run out of ideas. For example, the answers to the question “Where do you live” could be: on the third floor, on Main Street, at 45 Push Avenue, in a lovely city, in a place where it hardly ever rains, in the downtown, in the outskirts, in the place where my heart belongs to, in the middle of nowhere, in the place with stunning views etc... depending on the level of students. This exercise helps students to recycle the vocabulary, grammar and functional language, think on the spot in a fun and creative way, diversify the language. The other types of questions might be: How old are you? What do you think? When were you born? What do you do for living? What are your key duties?

Kris Kirby in the same conference presented techniques to encourage student speaking. The activities could be used independently to practice target grammar and vocabulary or as warmers.

Can't say “No.” Students work in groups of three. Each student writes three funny questions in Present Perfect, for instance, Student A writes, “Have you ever stolen from your teacher? Have you ever swum with sharks? Have you ever kissed a famous person?”. Student B must say `Yes, I have”. Student C straight away asks unprepared question somehow related to the initial one to get more details, like: “What did you steal?”, and Student A has to provide a brief story. Students go around the circle, so they have different roles and can control every time one another.

Make them use functional language. A teacher gets students to fill in the 3*3 grid with functional language depending on the topic (language for giving opinions, agreeing, disagreeing, apologizing, asking for request etc.) This can be done as an open class activity or in pairs, or individually subject to the level of students. Afterwards, students work in pairs. The teacher gives the topic for discussion and students take turns to express their opinions/ apologize agree/ disagree using every time a different expressing and crossing it out of the grid.

Alternatively, functional language can be practiced with the help of the mingling activity. As students change the partner, they get a new topic for discussion and hence have to use a different functional language on the spot.

Another way to drill the functional language is called “Write and Pass”. Students work in groups of three or four. Simultaneously each student independently writes a question using any functional language he knows on certain topic and passes a sheet of paper to his partner, who is supposed to answer it, write one more question using the functional language and pass again. While answering and asking questions students have to watch the writings and the language can not repeat. The game goes as many circles as many phrases are being in focus. Subsequently, the teacher randomly asks students to read out the lists, other students monitor the accuracy of phrases. The activity can be followed by semi-controlled freer-speaking mingling role-plays with the use of functional language.

Fortescue U. mentions in her talk for Oxford Teacher's Day in Ukraine in 2019 that the activity “Excuse me, you made a mistake” is not only applicable for practicing / recycling any language unit, but also assist development of cooperation, teaches students to be grateful as their mistakes are pointed out, be more attentive to own speech as well as others. The essence of the exercise lies in that one of students deliberately makes a mistake and other students have to spot it and politely interrupt and correct the student, saying, “Excuse me, but you made a mistake.”. Students afterwards can work in groups or pairs.

It goes without saying that group, pair and mingling activities are invaluable in language classes. There are three broad ways of grouping students. Teachers can let the students choose who they wish to work with, make the groups, or group them randomly. However, grouping or organizing students into pairs randomly is much more efficient than assigning partners by a teacher, as it serves the dual purpose: students can learn in the meanwhile and not waste precious time and most importantly make friends faster as see their partner choice as destiny. In his post, Haines P. shows a wealth of ways that can be used to organize students randomly [3]. The suggestions are organized into two sets.

Form a line. This grouping method requires students to stand up and form a line, complying to the set rule. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

1. Something in your bag or pocket - Each student chooses and takes out a personal item that they have in their bag or pocket (encourage students to choose a more unusual item, not just a pen, keys, a coin, etc.). Students get into a line in alphabetical order of the spelling of the name of the item they are holding.

2. Birthdays - Students get into a line ranked in the order of their birthdays in the year.

3. What's your favourite food? - Students write their favourite food (animal, place, singer, etc.) on a piece of paper. They get into a line in alphabetical order of the word they wrote.

4. What time did you go to bed last night? - Students get into a line ranked in order of the time that they went to bed last night.

5. How long did it take you to get here today? - Students get into a line ranked in order of how much time it took them to get to school today.

6. Where did you go on your last vacation? - Students get into a line ranked in alphabetical order of the name of the place they went on their last vacation.

7. Last 2 digits of your phone number - Students get into a line ranked in order of the last two digits of their phone number.

8. How much time did you spend away from home yesterday? - Students get into a line ranked in order of the amount of time they spend away from their home yesterday.

Directly into pairs or groups. Most of these suggestions require some degree of preparation before class.

10. What's the category? - To get students into groups of 4, the teacher chooses words of 4 kinds of fruit, 4 kinds of color, 4 kinds of animal, 4 kinds of furniture, etc., and writes each word on a separate piece of paper. Each student gets a word at random.

Students get into groups with people who have the same category of word.

11. Parts of a picture - The teacher has a number of different pictures and each is cut up into pieces. Each student gets a piece of a picture at random. Students get into groups with people who have the other pieces of the same picture.

12. Halves of collocations / sentences - To get students into pairs, the teacher chooses different collocations or sentences from the unit of the course book and writes each one on a strip of paper. Each student gets half of a collocation or sentence at random. Students get into pairs with the person with the corresponding half.

Conclusions and directions of further research

Activities that advocate development of emotional intelligence, critical thinking and creativity are indispensable in foreign language teaching. It would be perspective to research and compare the techniques to develop high order thinking skills used in other countries in higher education.

References

emotional intelligence learning english

1. Darn S. Emotional Intelligence and ELT. British council. Professional Development. Available online at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/emotional- intelligence-elt.

2. Dunn J. Extending critical thinking past the text. Cambridge University Press. October 2019. URL: https:// www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2019/11/01/extending- critical-thinking-past-the-text/.

3. Haines P. 25 ways of randomly placing students into pairs and groups. Oxford University Press ELT. 13 November 2018. URL: https://oupeltglobalblog. com/2018/11/13/25-ways-grouping-students/.

4. Michelioudakis N. Making Vocabulary Activities that stand out. Oxford University Press ELT. 26 July

2019. URL: https://oupeltglobalblog.com/2019/07/26/ making-vocabulary-activities/.

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