Importance of Emotional Learning for College Students

In a video lecture by Jorie Graham "On Description", she gave a clue to the importance of emotional learning for college students. The video, available on YouTube, is a lecture on writing, poetry, but she talked about the creation of a connection, emotionally, with each image filtered in any piece of art.

That is, the importance of emotional learning for college students isn’t only for easy (or creation of scenic effect for) learning but quick mental networking. More so, for the extraordinary ability of humans to feel each emotional attachment to every necessary social phase.

To know the importance of emotional learning for college students, the meaning of emotional learning must be established. Emotional learning can be described as the efficiency of teaching people, students, about ways to develop personal emotional intelligence.

That is the basic areas of emotions which include empathy, conscientiousness, self-motivation and control, good relationships or stable emotional state, as well as open-mindedness.

With these traits established at a young age, college students will learn emotionalism alongside their academic work of reading and writing. It helps in improving the state of mental health for students who come to school with depression, anxiety and any other form of mental weakness.

One basic thing is the innovation of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) which has also been adopted into the American educational sector. Social and Emotional Learning deals broadly with the interrogation of a man with his environment. An interrogation which relies strongly on the mental state of the people who are fundamentals of the society.

Following the SEL campaign, its various aspect has been included in academia. The basic goal of the SEL in college students is to increase self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness, build relationship skills and responsible decision-making.

It has been uncovered that taking these measures to teach students would make them productive adults. Adults who have learned the necessity of work and life right from college.

Significance of emotional learning

The streaming importance of emotional learning for college students rely basically on its lifetime awareness of emotions. That is, in his college life, work-life and adult life. The economic world has tilted to employing persons with human relationship skills. Man tilts to conceiving cordial (customer) relationships without which there is no social connection.

More so, knowing the basis of emotional intelligence can improve college students’ mental health. The network between health and academic or studying cannot be overemphasized. Poor mental health is synonymous with academic failure.

Mental health problems which include stress, anxiety, depression and other illness can largely lead to a lack of concentration in schools. Students must be helped to develop strategies to regularize and manage their emotions. It is subtly an integral form of control.

Emotional intelligence is now an important factor in a demanding global economy. To incorporate emotional learning is to lay a sturdy foundation needed for perfect utility in students’ career life. The skills which include critical thinking ability, communications, and human relationship skills, perseverance and flexibility amongst others, are essential features for employment today.

Emotional Learning trains open-minded students. Students are challenged to try new things while persevering. Emotional intelligence gives room for self-motivation, hence, innovation, while making him eligible to lead a life with his comparative academic knowledge.

The academia of the United States of America has also agreed that knowledge content isn’t sufficient to prepare students for post-graduation life. One way to ensure this is the social sense of belonging. Teachers and the State ensure that all citizens are given a sense of belonging, and the ability to be able to aspire.

When students realize that they are an integral part of society, it improves their mindset. This could, to a reasonable extent, permit students to build healthy human self-sense and the ability to handle events.

The application of emotional learning

To realize the importance of emotional learning in college students, one may ask how the form of learning can be applied. However, simple narratives can be used to achieve this feat.

The development of conscientiousness. The growth of a student’s self-consciousness and awareness of how his self-image influences the relationship he builds as well as his social interaction is significant. One of the means to ensure self-awareness is applying the metacognitive strategies.

That is, asking oneself self-reflective questions, engaging in perpetual self-evaluation as well as acknowledgment of actions regardless of its consequences for others.

The language of emotions should be stated clearly for the student’s understanding. Students should know that interpersonal skills can be applied to students’ emotional vocabularies. This is an important aspect of emotions.

Without appropriate words to exhibit emotions such as sympathy and empathy, sadness, denial and love, a student has no tool for emotional intelligence. Encouraging the writing and explanations of the different emotions from the alphabets can improve students’ emotional vocabulary awareness.

America is interested in individual persons. Hence, the regulation and management of individuals’ emotions can go a long way toward achieving this. When students can manage their thoughts and feelings, they receive mental support to control all challenges.

This can be achieved by exercising patience, to consider events as an opportunity for reinforcement and not a threat against their persons.

It is also important that active listening is incorporated into the teaching mode. Striking dialogues, drama, consciousness to body language and communications is an effective way of achieving this.

At this, students are aware of the importance of each form of language. Both verbal, gestures and the literal effect of drama.

The approach of emotional learning extends to explicit socio-emotional skills which will be integrated with academic curricula and teachers' instructional materials. This will achieve students’ competence in the 5 fundamental areas of emotional learning.

A child’s development through emotional learning and intelligence is synonymous with his happiness as an adult. With the operations of Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the mode of transformation via emotional learning has been projected.

At this, with the encouragement of the government, the importance and applications of emotional learning are made fundamental and it promises a better generation than the present. This is because it features an academic success, positive social and emotional behavior, less emotional distress and its management as well as beliefs in oneself and other persons.