EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE JOURNALISTIC WRITING PROFICIENCY OF STUDENT-WRITERS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS OF EASTERN SAMAR

This correlational study is set to determine the relationship of Emotional Intelligence to the journalistic writing proficiency of the 277 student-writers in public secondary schools of Eastern Samar selected through two-stage stratified random sampling procedure. Data were gathered using a modified questionnaire from The Schutte SelfReport Emotional Intelligence Scale developed by Schutte (2009) and a proficiency test in journalistic writing. The data were analyzed using Kendall's Tau-b Correlation and Mann-Whitney U Test. The results revealed that there is no significant difference on Emotional Intelligence and journalistic writing proficiency according to school location; managing others' emotions as a parameter of Emotional Intelligence indicates a significant relationship to editorial writing and sports Writing. The study also revealed that there is no significant difference on Emotional Intelligence and journalistic writing proficiency of student-writers based on their school location. A p- value of 0.050 on the association between managing other's emotion as a parameter of Emotional Intelligence and editorial writing is found to be significant, as well as to sports writing (p= 0.047). Based on the research findings, it is recommended that student-writers should be provided activities and facilities to enhance the way they manage and integrate emotions to their writing abilities because emotion management is imperative to journalistic writing.