Picture of Students' Self-Esteem in Learning Speaking

Self-esteem is one of affective factors on students' speaking performance. Accordingly, this study elaborates students' self-esteem while they perform speaking tasks at English Study Program of University of Muhammadiyah Bengkulu (UMB). The current study is set in frame of descriptive study in order to gain indepth qualitative explanation on students' self-esteem. It mainly questions both on types of students' self-esteem and on how the self-esteem description based on gender of students. The study took a massive number of study subjects consisted of students learning speaking from several semesters. The researchers administered questionnaire and interview to collect data of the study. These two instruments were composed based on theories of self-esteem. Data obtained from the two instruments sketched in detail the state of self-esteem of male and female students at Englsih Study Program of UMB. The finding of the study shows that majority of EFL learners at UMB are possessing task self-esteem with the highest percentage of 67% compared to two other types of self-esteem. In addition, there were no firm difference between male and female learners' self-esteem when they are learning speaking. The result of this study becomes an informative acknowledgement to the field of teaching speaking in term of students' self-esteem when they learn speaking. It also becomes an important information for teachers who teach speaking either at Muhammadiyah University of Bengkulu or at other universities that give speaking subject. In addition, the result also gives broader insight on male and female studensts' self-esteem in learning speaking.