Abstract
Emotional intelligence in educational leadership has become widely recognised as critical in determining effectiveness and influencing decision-making and communication strategies. The article presents a study on emotional intelligence development in students by implementing specific exercises and sociocultural materials in English lessons. The experimental study was conducted at the Multidisciplinary College. The study was undertaken from September 2023 to April 2024. The sample involved 25 third-year students from the experimental group and 24 third-year students from the control group, all majoring in “foreign language teaching”. Theoretical methods included the analysis and synthesis of academic and methodological literature related to the research topic, with particular attention given to the seminal works on emotional intelligence by J. Mayer, P. Salovey, D. Caruso, D. Goleman, and R. Bar-On. Empirical research methods included a pedagogical experiment with analytical and statistical processing of data on the level of emotional intelligence before introducing a set of exercises and sociocultural materials into the educational process and at the end of the experiment. The theoretical significance of the research enhances the academic understanding of emotional intelligence and its application in language education. The practical importance of the work is that the proposed set of exercises and sociocultural materials opens up prospects for its application among English language teachers. The study findings can contribute to the modernisation of the educational process aimed at the comprehensive development of students in the context of modern language education.