Résumé:
The present study aims at exploring whether there is a relationship between self-esteem
and oral performance for third year LMD English learners. It is hypothesized that English
language students with high self-esteem will perform well in oral communication. The
research methodology adopted in this study is a descriptive-correlation one; it is intended
to describe two variables: self-esteem as the independent variable and foreign language
speaking as the dependent variable, and to identify the relationship between them. The data
obtained are gathered through two tests (Sorensen’s self-esteem test and the speaking test)
which are handed to a sample of 10 students at English department at Jijel University. The
results obtained reveals that there is a very small and weak relationship between students’
self-esteem and their foreign language speaking performance. The hypothesis is not fully
confirmed in the sense that students with high self-esteem did not perform well in the oral
task but students with low self-esteem did. The students’ poor achievement in oral
production is due to other aspects rather than self-esteem. The present study should be
replicated on a large scale and over a long period of time in order to further test its
hypothesis
