The Integration of Emotional Intelligence Activities in Bilingual Stories for Children

Recently, many Iranian parents aim to help their children in the process of learning English as a foreign language without considering their children’s competence in the first language. However, when their children become bilingual,they fail in some biliteracy skills such as imagination, categorizing the information in a paragraph, empathizing withthe writer, critical thinking, to name a few. Moreover, these skills are rooted in individuals’ emotional intelligence.Thus, the purpose of this study is to consider the role of emotional intelligence in children’s language learning and biliteracy process through including emotional intelligence activities in a frame of bilingual stories. To do the research, the Pinocchio story book with emotional intelligence activities were taught to a group of 30 bilingual children agingfrom 10 to 12 in Mashhad. Then, an unstructured interview was conducted after teaching the story regarding thechildren’s comments about the activities developed in the story book. This study concludes that the integration ofemotional intelligence activities in the framework of bilingual stories can have a major and significant role in children’s language learning, motivate them toward learning the second language, and improve their metalinguistic, awareness, imagination, creativity and empathy

Keywords:

language learning , emotional intelligence , story book