A Research On The Relation Among Self-talk, Academic Self-concept, And Self-esteem Of Junior Middle School Students

Junior middle school students with too much study task and mental stress keepparticular attitude towards their study ability. It’s a way to study whether students areoften aware of their study through self-talk. And the valence of self-talk (positive vs.negative) which reflects students’attitude about study relates to students’ academicself-concept and self-esteem. The present study is to revise a piece of self-talkinventory, study the feature of junior middle school students’ self-talk, investigate therelation of academic self-concept, self-esteem and self-talk，and pursuit of academichelp from the perspective of self-talk, so that we can help students to become activelearners effectively.First，it revised a piece of self-talk inventory about study. Then students fromthree grades in3middle schools were selected in the investigation, answering threequestionnaires during their normal class periods. It analyzed the junior middle schoolstudents’ self-talk, academic self-concept and self-esteem. Differences of self-talk,academic self-concept and self-esteem between quick class and slow class werestudied. It also tested the effects of self-talk and self-esteem on academic self-concept.The result shows that:1. The revised self-talk inventory has good reliability and validity. The inventorycan be used to study the junior middle school students’ self-talk about study. Andself-talk includes two dimensions (positive vs. negative).2. Boys in grade eight keep most negative self-talk because of astableself-evaluation and great pressure from study and society. The amount of negativeself-talk in grade nine is less than it in grade eight because of their stableself-self-knowledge. Girls’ negative self-talk has no significant difference amonggrades. There are no significant differences in different grades for positive self-talk ofboys and girls.3. Students of different sexes and grades use similar amount of positive self-talk.The study of junior middle school students’ negative self-talk shows: there issignificant difference between grade seven and grade eight. The former is less thanthe latter. Sexes show no significant difference. 4. Academic self-concept of grade seven is remarkably higher than that of gradeeight, because students in grade seven evaluate themselves more positive, andstudents in grade eight load greater pressures from study and society. There is nosignificant difference between sexes in the academic self-concept.5. Students of grade seven keep higher state self-esteem because of their success.Students in grade eight and nine keep lower self-esteem because of their maturecognitive ability. Boys have higher self-esteem than girls in grade nine because boysare good at math and space cognitive ability.6. The higher of academic self-concept, the more of positive self-talk and the lessof negative self-talk. Self-esteem shows the same as academic self-concept.7. Self-esteem and self-talk can predicate academic self-concept significantly.The most important predictor of academic self-concept is negative self-talk, thenself-esteem, and the last one positive self-talk.