A Research On Correlation Of Self-esteem And The Oral Production Of English Majors

Self-esteem, as a positive and essential psychological factor in the process ofhuman cognition development, occupies an undeniable place in various aspects, suchas psychological field, medical field, Second Language Acquisition and the practicalwork. Studies have proved that self-esteem has great influence on Second LanguageAcquisition. As for the relation between self-esteem and Second Language Learning,researchers have explored the following studies: the relation between self-esteem andachievement, the relation between self-esteem and Second Language Learning, therelation between self-esteem and linguistics. However, few researchers have set theirfoot into the correlation between self-esteem of English majors and their oralproduction. Therefore, it is indispensable to proceed this study.The aims of this study are：Firstly, examine the correlation between Englishmajors’ self-esteem and fluency, accuracy, complexity of their oral production. Thenexplore the differences in the three dimensions of the oral production of high and lowself-esteem learners. The subjects of this study are35juniors, majoring in Englishfrom Jiangxi Normal University. The methods of this study include two aspects: testthe students’ self-esteem by Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale(1965), collect students’ oralproduction task by picture telling.The results of this study are: Self-esteem has a positive correlation with accuracyand fluency, which means that the higher the subjects’ self-esteem is, the moreaccurate and fluent oral production they will elicit. But there is no correlation betweenself-esteem and complexity, which means those who are high self-esteem learnersmay produce less complex oral production. There exists obvious differences influency and accuracy between high and low self-esteem learners, the level of accuracyand fluency of high self-esteem learners is much higher than low ones.This study consists of five chapters, the first chapter mainly has an introduction of research purpose and significance. Chapter two presents a literature review onself-esteem and oral production. Chapter three is about the research methods,including research questions, subjects, instruments and the data collection andanalysis. The content of chapter four is research results and discussion. The lastchapter covers the conclusion of this study, briefly expounding the main findings ofthis research, the enlightenment for oral English teaching, the limitation of thisresearch and the suggestions for future study.