Emotional Intelligence as a Driving Force in the Study of Foreign Languages in Higher Education

The study of foreign languages in the era of the third millennium is perhaps one of the most important, life-affirming competencies for the modern man. One of the effective ways to maintain motivation among university students to learn a foreign language, do their language tasks and attend practical language classes is to establish a special emotional connection with the student, i.e. to activate emotional intelligence in the process of L2 learning and the teacher - student interaction. The main goal of this research is to study the relationship between the level of development of a teacher's emotional intelligence (L2 teacher at the university) and the success of mastering a foreign language by students of linguistic specialties in a higher educational institution. The variety of methods for diagnosing emotional intelligence were used in this work (EmIn questionnaire by D. Lyusin; N. Hall and empathy level estimate by V.V. Boyko). Methods of statistical data processing - factor, correlation and regression analyses - allowed measuring and establishing a teacher's ability to understand students' emotions, manage their emotional sphere in order to achieve the most effective teaching result in foreign language classes. 22 senior students from the Institute of Foreign languages at Moscow State Pedagogical University participated in the experiment. The study made it possible to establish a significant correlation between the parametric data on the teacher's emotional intelligence and the academic success of a student studying a foreign language. A system of recommendations was introduced on the level of development of L2 teachers' emotional intelligence with the aim of establishing a positive emotional connection with students and creating a favourable learning atmosphere in L2 classes as well as achieving effective learning outcomes.