Investigating the Effects of Iranian EFL Students' Self-esteem on Their Oral Performance

The present research attempts to investigate how EFL students' self- esteem affects their oral performanceat the Department of foreign languages branch of English studies at the University of Qom. Furthermore,our study investigates how self-steem can improve students oral performance and participation in theclassroom besides the role of the teachers in promoting students to speak and in building their self-steemin order to make them feel more secure. Throughout this research, we hypothesize that the more studentsof third year English have trust in their abilities, the more they are likely to enhance their oralperformance in the foreign language. Besides, the learners' performance in speaking can be fostered whenteachers reinforce in their students a positive self- image. In order to verify those two hypothesises wehave chosen third year students as our sample. To conduct this study, we have used a qualitative(descriptive) research based on two suitable tools: an interview directed to third year teachers of oralexpression module at the Department of foreign languages branch of English studies at Qom Universitybesides to a classroom observation conducted with third year classes in oral expression sessions. Based onthe results, our two hypothesizes were confirmed. Hence, the findings revealed that EFL students' selfsteem has a great impact on their oral performance and the teachers' positive support is required to boosttheir self-steem.