Teaching Emotional Intelligence in an English as a foreign language classroom through the book "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse" by Charlie Mackesy

Abstract

According to Brackett and Cipriano (2020), children tend to learn Emotional Intelligence in the first years of their lives due to their interactions with their caregivers and yet, todays’ students do not seem to have this ability. The purpose of this article is to acknowledge the importance of teaching Emotional Intelligence (EI) in an English as Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, and how the use of literature can promote this learning. The general understanding in previous research has been that teaching Emotional Intelligence in the classroom is beneficial for the students, and researchers such as Goleman (1995), Ghosn (2001) and Mcdonald (2021) corroborate that. To demonstrate that it is possible to teach EI in a classroom, we have made use of the book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy (2019), and a bibliographical and qualitative research through Daniel Goleman’s EI aspects has been carried out. In addition, some suggestions of activities for teaching EI in an EFL classroom were presented. Ultimately, we propose that teaching Emotional Intelligence in the classroom should be added into school curriculums, once it can improve students' relationships, foster their empathy and create a safe atmosphere for language teaching and learning.