IMPACT OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND VERBAL INTELLIGENCE: A MODEL STUDY ON BOSNIAN AND TURKISH STUDENTS

Abstract

Abstract This study addresses itself to the major areas relevant to the study and understanding of the relationships between man's verbal intelligence and its social being and humanistic assets in an individual-differences framework. It aims to reinvigorate discussions of language learning intelligence types, speed of verbal access, verbal language interaction practises, language comprehension between foreign language learning and verbal ability in English. A total of 125 students participated in our research. The current research has been conducted in international high schools and universities in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina. In order to fulfill main purposes of this research, we have composed nine questions in the form of Likert five-point scale. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, we have conducted correlational analysis, t-tests for independent samples and multiple regression analysis (MRA).

The participants who showed verbal linguistic intelligence were found to be higher users of cognitive strategies which in turn plays an important role in the development of language and literacy skills. Self-reported verbal intelligence reveals statistically significant correlations with learning skills of our subjects and with their degree of liking humanities and social sciences. Bosnian students speak more languages than Turkish students, but these groups of participants have similar interest for learning foreign languages. Self-assessed verbal intelligence is in a statistically significant correlation with number of languages which are spoken by our respondents. Verbal intelligence is not significantly correlated with interest to learn foreign languages, nor is the last mentioned variable with number of spoken languages.

Key words: verbal intelligence, learning skills, foreign language learning, attitudes towards learning, motivation for learning.