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For centuries the main emphasis in education has been placed upon cognitive abilities. Emotional aspects have long been neglected and on occasion not even considered at all. Nevertheless, it is not only parents at present who have to assume responsibility for shaping emotions of their children. The introduction of emotional intelligence in the school curriculum is seemingly inevitable and promises to bring about a radical change in educating the whole human being. This study examines the impact of emotional intelligence on the first year students' communicative competence. The author of this article created a training program entitled "Activities for Developing Emotional Intelligence in SLA" and implemented it in order to increase the students' emotional awareness, empathy, co-operation, the ability to manage their emotions, communicative competence and the ability to resolve conflicts. The group of participants consisted of 30 students from the Teacher Training College in Częstochowa and the program lasted for half a year (45-min session per week)—the students' second term of their first year of study. Subsequently, at the end of the training the students assessed how worthwhile the whole process of introducing aspects of emotional intelligence was by giving oral interviews. The findings revealed that the introduction of such a program into the conversation classes was not only appreciated and valued by the students, but also beneficial in terms of positively impacting on certain attributes linked to the students' emotional competencies.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-08353-7_7

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