An Experimental Study on the Impact(s) of Emotional Intelligence Enhancement on Answering Cloze Test among Iranian University Students Mohammad Reza Ebrahimi Chabahar Maritime University, Iran Hooshang Khoshsima Language Department, Chabahar Maritime University, Iran Abstract—The current study was after investigating the tentative link(s) between enhancing Emotional Intelligence (EI) and progress in performance in cloze test among Iranian university students. For this purpose, 39 students in treatment and control group completed the "Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire" and answered a cloze test as pre-test; afterwards, they received instructions on EQ and strategies to enhance it. At the end of the course, the same cloze test was administered as post-test. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test. The analysis of the data revealed that there is a significant difference in the progress of students' score in cloze test in two groups. The results help understand how students’ emotional intelligence enhancement influences cloze test scores and also possibly in a broader scale, testing. Index Terms—cloze test, emotional intelligence enhancement, University students I. INTRODUCTION In taking tests (specially written ones) there is one main factor at work, the "Brain". Educators (along with many other specialists) have studied the brain and its structure to discover how it works and how much instructions it can store and recall. Thus, whatever surrounds and seemingly blocks access to competence must be known in order to be controlled or neutralized. EI (which involves various other psychological constructs) could be thought of as a surrounding factor of language ability that can both block learning and recalling. It is not common for psychological constructs to receive as widespread attention as EI has received; it has been so much controversial that the most widely read social science book was devoted to it (Goleman, 1995). Beside this best seller book, many other popular books and magazine, and newspaper articles focused on EI. "Google Scholar shows 57,000 references to emotional intelligence in scientific work during the years 1995 to 2000, 121,000 references during the years 2001 to 2006, and 162,000 references in the years 2007 to 2012"(Nicola, et al. 2013, p. 57). Results of behavioral decision research indicated that the emotions individuals expect to experience or experienced ones in the past as the upshot of their actions are important in determining their behavior (Mellers, Schwartz, & Ritov, 1999). Emotional reactions can include adjustment in thinking, behavior, and language. The end products of these shifts probably clouts aptness to think and act in certain ways. The improvement of an emotion over time banks on how the situation is appraised and handled. Goleman (1995) claimed that EQ can predict success at home, at work, and at school, as well as or better than IQ; he further suggested that successful life outcomes are more a function of emotional rather than cognitive intelligence. Cherniss (2000, p. 547) claimed that "a considerable body of research suggests that EI provides the basis for competencies important in almost any job". Rosete and Ciarrochi (2005) in a study examining the relationship between EI and IQ found that an executive needs a high IQ to get to the management or executive levels, but once people reach that position, IQ does not discriminate between better or worse performing managers, instead EI becomes the main predictor to differentiate the star managers from the average performers. There is a considerable body of evidence which suggests that EI has a positive impact on student's academic success (Abdullah et al. 2004; Parker et al. 2004a, 2004b); Mayer and Salovey (1997) suggested that general intelligence accounts for almost 10 to 20 percent of success. Regarding its say in academic settings and more particularly in the realm of language education, there is considerable interest in figuring out whether individual difference measures (other than intelligence) predict academic success. A sizable literature on this issue indicated links between personality and other traits and academic success. As an example, Parker et al. (2004) in a research examining the transition from high school to university, also found that various EI dimensions predicted academic success. More recently, a small body of empirical research has emerged to indicate that EI is not unrelated to academic achievement. Petrides, Frederickson, and ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 5, No. 8, pp. 1586-1593, August 2015 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0508.07 © 2015 ACADEMY PUBLICATION