Abstract

The study examines the effects of self efficacy, self esteem and gender on performances in speaking tasks among first year university students. It also analyzes correlations of and gender differences in the variables treated. In this study, 128 participants, who had been interested to participate, were included. To gather data, scales and tests were used. Both descriptive and inferential statistics, namely, t-test, Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, and multiple regression analyses were applied to analyze the data. The results reveal that male students surpass female students in all the variables treated. It also is evident that all the variables are interrelated positively. Moreover, the output of the first multiple regression analysis show that 55% of the variances in speaking performance is accounted for by the group effects of the independent variables entered in the regression equation. Among these, speaking self-esteem and speaking efficacy were found to have great effects on performance in speaking tasks. Such findings seem to make clearer that attention needs to be paid to the determinants of speaking performance.

Key words: Self efficacy, global self esteem, academic self esteem, speaking self esteem, speaking performance.