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Foreign Language Self-Esteem and the Oral Communicative Ability of University Students By Badran A. Hassan, Ph.D. College of Education, Mansoura University Mansoura Faculty of Education Journal, 19, 1-19, 1992 ABSTRACT Foreign Language Self-Esteem and the Oral Communicative Ability of University Stu...

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Foreign Language Self-Esteem and the Oral Communicative Ability of University Students Badran A Hassan

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Foreign Language Self-Esteem and the Oral Communicative Ability of University Students

By

Badran A. Hassan, Ph.D. College of Education, Mansoura University

Mansoura Faculty of Education Journal, 19, 1-19, 1992

ABSTRACT

Foreign Language Self-Esteem and the Oral Communicative Ability of University Students By Badran A. Hassan, Ph.D. College of Education, Mansoura University

The purpose of this study was to investigate any possible relationship between foreign language self-esteem and the oral communicative ability (OCA) of university students. Two other variables, namely, sex and academic achievement, were also examined. Subjects were college sophomores who studied English as a foreign language from eight to ten years. They were administered the Foreign Language Self-Esteem Scale (FLSES), which was specifically developed for the purpose of this study, and an OCA test. Results indicated that a relationship existed between students' FLSES scores and their OCA scores (r = 0.73, p < 0.01). No significant results were obtained for the 'sex' and 'academic achievement' variables.

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INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND:

Recent research in the field of teaching English as a second language (ESL) indicates an increased interest in the learner's role in the learning process. The focus on the individuality of learners is one of the state-of-theart trends in the field (Morley, 1987). That is why more attention has been directed not only toward the learner's cognitive factors but also the affective variables that might affect the acquisition, the use, and the output of a second language. Attitudes make one type of a learner's affective variables. Gardner and Lambert (1972) classify attitudes into two categories: External and internal. External attitudes stand for the evaluations which the learner directs towards the outer environment, i.e. factors outside himself. They include the worth the learner holds for the foreign language and for its culture. Internal attitudes, on the other hand, refer to those evaluations which the learner directs inside himself. These include the learner's competency in the foreign language and his self-worth. These internal attitudes which are directed toward the inside of the human personality have been referred to in the literature using various terms such as ego, self-perception, self-confidence, self-image, self-concept, and self-esteem. Self-esteem is the main focus of this paper. Self-esteem is an egocentric personality factor which means the worth that persons place upon themselves. Coopersmith (1967) defines selfesteem in the following manner: "By self-esteem, we refer to the evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself, it expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval, and indicates the extent to which an individual believes himself to be capable, significant, successful, and worth. In short, self-esteem is a personal judgement of worthiness that is expressed in the attitudes the individual holds toward himself. It is a subjective experience which the individual conveys to others by verbal reports and other overt expressive behavior" (pp. 4-5). Lawrence (1981) defines self-esteem as the person's effective evaluation of the sum of his/her characteristics both mental and physical. RobisonAwana, Kehle, and Jenson (1986) put forward a similar definition for selfesteem. They define it as the person's evaluation of himself. Self-esteem in language learning, Heyde-Parsons (1983) explains, refers to evaluations students consciously make of their situations where they use the foreign language (English in this case) and to evaluations they make of individual aspects of specific self-esteem such as language learning ability, 3

their actual language use, in-class relationships, and student behavior toward the foreign language.

SELF-ESTEEM AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: A number of studies (Fink, 1962; Williams and Cole, 1968), using various subject populations and measurement procedures, have reported significant positive relationships between self-esteem and academic achievement. Another study (Primavera, Simon, and Primavera, 1974) found that for a sample of fifth and sixth graders attending a Catholic school in New York State, USA, there were significant positive correlations between self-esteem and (a) each of the five subtests of the Stanford Achievement Tests (Kelley et al., 1964)(Word Meaning, Paragraph Meaning, Arithmetic Computation, Arithmetic Concepts and Arithmetic Applications) and (b) the New York State Reading and Mathematics Achievement Tests. William Fitts (1972), on the other hand, conducted a study trying to relate self-concept to academic performance. He concluded that the relationship between these two variables is neither clear nor conclusive. Simon and Boyle (1975) divided self-esteem into three levels: global, specific (in this instance defined as educational and intellectual esteems), and task (collected before and after mid-term exam) self-esteems. They related these three levels of self-esteem to academic performance. They found that: a) global self-esteem was unrelated to predictions of performance and to actual performance, b) specific self-esteem was more closely related to and predictive of actual performance than global self-esteem, and c) task selfesteem was the most predictive of actual performance. In conclusion, there is a number of studies reporting positive correlations between self-esteem and academic achievement (e.g. Fink, 1962; Pierrs and Harris, 1964; Williams and Cole, 1968; Purtcey, 1970), although other studies have not produced consistent or significant results (Fitts, 1973; Thomas, 1973).

SELF-ESTEEM AND SEX DIFFERENCES: Some investigations in the area of sex differences as related to selfesteem indicated that females tend to have high self-esteem as compared to 4

males. Coopersmith (1967) reported significant self-esteem sex differences favoring females. Lerner, Sabura, and Chihara (1981) studied self-esteem among Japanese adolescents. Again, results came in favor of girls. On the other hand, other studies such as Marron and Kayson (1984) indicated that boys, and not girls, tended to have higher self-esteem.

SELF-ESTEEM AND SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING: Few studies (Heyde, 1977; Prewitt-Diaz, 1979; Peterson, 1981; Anderson, 1982; Heyde-Parsons, 1983; Labrie and Normand, 1986) explored the relationship between self-esteem and learning second languages. Following is a survey of these studies. Heyde (1977) put forth a research plan on the relationship between the three levels of self-esteem (global, specific, and task) and the oral production of English as a second language. She also reported on a pilot study she conducted for the purpose of exploring the relationship between the abovementioned variables. Findings indicated that high self-esteem subjects received higher production ratings from themselves and their teachers than the low self-esteem subjects. Finally, she acknowledges the limitation of this study stating that "the results of this study are inconclusive since the population was small (N = 15)" (p. 232). Prewitt-Diaz (1979) conducted a study on a group of ninth grade students to investigate the effects of a bilingual curriculum on monolingual Spanish students with regard to their self-concept and attitude toward school. The researcher used one treatment group and two comparison groups: monolingual English students and bilingual students. The monolingual English and bilingual groups were from a mainstream curriculum. These three groups of students were administered the following instruments: Coopersmith's 1967 Self-Esteem Inventory, Frith and Nakimura's SelfAppraisal Inventory, and the School Sentiment Inventory both at the beginning and at the end of the semester. Results of analysis of variance produced a significant difference in the dependent measure, i.e., the SelfEsteem Inventory. The Self Appraisal Inventory yielded a significant difference between the groups in self-concept; and the School Sentiment Inventory was statistically significant. Results indicated that high selfesteem was associated with better bilingual students. Peterson (1981) investigated Mexican American children who had difficulty learning to read. One of her conclusions was that low self-esteem contributed to the inability to read amongchildren. 5

Anderson's 1982 study presented a preliminary attempt to gain insight into the self-perceptions of students and the teachers' observations regarding their students' abilities in English as a second language. A random sample of twenty-two adults used. Subjects who were attending university courses came from eleven different countries. Both males and females, they ranged in age from 19 to 34, and spoke eight languages natively. They were asked to respond to a self-esteem questionnaire. Similarly, their teachers were asked to respond to a questionnaire about their perceptions of their students' abilities in English as a second language ability similarly. The study suggested that self-esteem might be a factor in motivating students. Heyde-Parsons (1983) studied the relationship between self-esteem and the acquisition of French, especially with performance on an extemporaneus speech. The purpose of her study was to explore the relationship between three levels of self-esteem (global, specific, and task) and students' oral production of a foreign language. Subjects were students enrolled in the first semester of the first of French (French 101) at the University of Michigan. It was hypothesized that task self-esteem scores would correlate the most closely with performance on an extemporaneus speech, specific self-esteem less closely, and the least with global self-esteem. Speech scores appeared to correlate with those aspects of specific and global self-esteem which were directly related to the subjects' evaluations of their ability to learn and to use a language. The speech scores did not seem to correlate with other aspects of specific self-esteem. Labrie and Normand (1986) investigated the relationship between certain factors among which was self-esteem and proficiency in learning a second language. Ninth grade Francophone students living in a bilingual milieu responded to tests including scales of ethnolinguistic vitality, attitudes, motivation, self-esteem, and second language competence and use. Analyses indicated that contact in Anglophones and self-esteem with English as a second language were related to motivation, which was related to second language competence. One common factor among these studies is that they positively relate high self-esteem to successful second language learning. Another general remark is that these studies have been conducted on different second languages such as Spanish, French, and English. Also, the age groups of subjects participating in these studies varied including children, ninth graders, college freshmen, and adult students. A final remark is that all previous studies except for one (i.e. Heyde-Parsons, 1983) had a wide range of variables, and self-esteem was merely one variable among many.

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NEED FOR THE STUDY: Although related literature reports on few studies relating self-esteem to second language learning, there is no mention of any studies investigating the same variables in a foreign language environment involving learners from an Arabic language background studying English as a foreign language. Survey of literature also revealed that a self-esteem scale specifically designed for foreign language learners does not exist. Therefore, the need dictated that this type of scale be developed and tried in a foreign language environment. Based on Gardner and Lambert (1972) who found that a relationship exists between integrative motivation which is an affective variable and second language proficiency especially in the oral-aural features of proficiency, it was decided to explore any possible relationship between selfesteem (another affective variable) and the oral proficiency of Egyptian students learning English as a foreign language.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: The purpose of this study was to investigate any possible relationship between self-esteem and the oral communicative ability (hereafter, referred to as OCA) of students learning English as a foreign language. ('Sex' and 'academic achievement' were incorporated into this study since the literature reports conflicting evidence regarding their relationship to self-esteem.)

HYPOTHESES: 1. Both self-esteem and the OCA of students are positively related to each other. 2. There is no significant relationship between students' academic achievement scores and their OCA scores. 3. There is no relationship between students' academic achievement and their self-esteem. 4. There is no significant difference between sex of students and their performance on the OCA test. 5. There is no significant difference between sex of students and their academic achievement. 7

6. There is no significant difference between male and female students in their performance on the Foreign Language Self-Esteem Scale (FLSES).

SUBJECTS: One hundred and fourteen sophomores (51 males and 63 females) enrolled at the College of Education, Mansoura University made up the sample of this study. Subjects, all non-specialists in English, studied EFL as required course. (Academic specialization was not a variable in the present study). Student ages ranged from nineteen to twenty two. Their exposure to English as a foreign language ranged from eight to ten years.

INSTRUMENTS: a) Foreign Language Self-Esteem Scale (FLSES) The independent variable, self-esteem, was assessed by the Foreign Language Self-Esteem Scale (see Appendix). The FLSES was specially developed for the purposes of this study. Prior to the development of the FLSES, a thorough survey of related literature, particularly existing self-esteem scales and questionnaires, was conducted. The purpose of this self-report measure is to account for the degree of self-esteem among foreign language learners. The FLSES is made up of 25 items. It includes four sections: a) language ability, b) actual in-class language use, c) in-class relationships, and d) attitude toward and/or behavior in the foreign language (FL) class. This classification of the different sections of the FLSES is partly based on Coopersmith (1967) and Heyde-Parsons (1983). Coopersmith (1967), for instance, indicates that one aspect of self-esteem is the extent to which anindividual believes himself capable of doing. FLSES items are statements to which students respond on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from strong agreement to strong disagreement. To correct for the effects of acquiescence, some items were worded negatively (e.g. I don't feel at ease when I talk to my FL instructors). Possible scores on the FLSES range from 25 to 125. For this study sample, scores ranged from 33 to 114 (X = 70.36, SD = 25.24). Scale reliability, estimated from Cronbach's 1951 coefficient alpha, was .95.

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The Arabic version of the FLSES was submitted to eight experts in the fields of Education and Educational Psychology to check whether the individual items of the scale actually measure what the scale proposes to measure. Interjudge correlations were high (r = .83). b) The Test of Oral Communicative Ability (OCA) in English:

The OCA test was used to measure students' oral proficiency in the English language. This test (Royal Society of Arts Examination Board, no date available) followed an interview format, and included the following topics: a) Describing home town/village, b) Describing/explaining a process or a procedure (e.g. How to ride a bike, or how to make a cake, etc...), c) Giving a short monologue, d) Picking a newspaper headline (from Al-Ahram Weekly or the Egyptian Gazette, for example) to elaborate on, and e) Giving some general information about the College of Education. Maximum score for the test was 50; 10 marks for each topic. This test was administered by two English instructors working at the College. The two interviewers were trained on giving the test to ensure that they would be using similar criteria in rating students' oral performance. The test was administered individually by single examiners. Time did not permit paired-examiner interviewing with 109 students. Inter-rater reliability was high (r = .81).

PROCEDURE: 1. Subjects were informed that participation in the testing sessions was voluntary and that the grades they would get would not in any way affect their grades at the end of the EFL course. All but five participated in the two testing sessions. 2. Subjects were administered the FLSES in one class session. Administration time for the FLSES was about twenty minutes. Instructions for the FLSES made it clear that there were no right or wrong answers to the scale items and that they should respond the way they felt the item should be answered. 3. The OCA measure was administered by holding individual appointments for students with two language instructors working at the College of Education. Both interviewers were instructed to follow the same guidelines in conducting the interviews. 9

4. Information related to sex and age of students was obtained from a biographical data collection form. Student academic achievement scores on the EFL course final examination were obtained from college records.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS: Results of the study will be reported according to the research hypotheses: 1. Pearson Product Moment Correlations were computed to test hypotheses 1 through 3.

Table 1 Correlations Between Self-Esteem and Oral Communicative Ability (OCA)

Variables Self-Esteem

r

p

.73

.01

OCA

Table 1 indicates that both Self-Esteem and the OCA of the sample group are positively related at the .01 level of significance (r = .73). This result upholds the first hypothesis (stating that both self-esteem and the OCA of students are positively related to each other). This finding was expected and is consistent with previous research findings reported by Heyde, 1977; Heyde-Parsons, 1983; and Labrie and Normand, 1986. Table 2 Correlations Between Academic Achievement and Oral Communicative Ability (OCA)

01

Variables Self-Esteem

r

p

.14

NS

OCA Table 2 shows that academic achievement of students and their oral communicative ability are not correlated, because no significant results were found between both variables. Thus, the second hypothesis (stating that there is no significant relationship between students' academic achievement scores and their OCA scores) can be confirmed. This finding was not expected. Although both the OCA and academic achievement tests aimed at assessing certain aspects of the overall proficiency of foreign language learners, yet no significant correlations were found between them. This might be partly due to the different nature of both tests; one emphasized oral proficiency and the other emphasized language structure and reading comprehension. This finding is peculiar and needs more investigation to find out if it is a recurrent pattern or merely a one time event that is less likely to occur again.

Table 3 Correlations Between Self-Esteem and Academic Achievement

Variables Self-Esteem