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

Abstract

This study addresses major areas relevant to the study and understanding of the relationships between human verbal intelligence, their 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 the main purposes of this research, we have composed nine questions in the form of Likert five-point scale. In order to test the proposed hypothesis, we have conducted correlational analysis, ttests 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 the interest to learn foreign languages, nor is the last mentioned variable with the number of spoken languages.