Cultural Intelligence and Learner Autonomy among Iranian Advanced Learners of English

The importance of learners’ cultural intelligence and autonomy as influential components in learning a foreign language has been identified by many scholars in the field of language teaching and learning. Finding out more about the relationship between cultural intelligence and learner autonomy, paves the way for improvement in the field of language teaching and learning. In order to achieve this goal present study aimed to investigate the relationship between cultural intelligence and learner autonomy among Iranian advanced EFL learners. The present study was conducted in a number of institutes in Karaj. Based on Nelson proficiency test which had been administered to 120 learners of English (both male and female), 40 EFL learners were identified as advanced learners who were considered as the participants of the study. The participants ranged from14 to 43. After assigning demographic scale, the participants were given two questionnaires in order to investigate cultural intelligence and autonomy respectively. Then, existence of positive correlation between the participants ‘cultural intelligence and their autonomy in general as well as the positive relationship between each components of cultural intelligence and the participants’ autonomy in particular was examined. In this study linear regression was used to predict values on autonomy from those on cultural intelligence. Spearman s rho was also employed to investigate correlation between the intended variables. The results of the study confirmed the existence of a positive relationship between Iranian advanced EFL learners’ cultural intelligence and their autonomy

Keywords:

cultural intelligence , learner autonomy , advanced EFL learners