Abstract

The mixed use of he/she in oral English is a hot topic in the field of second language acquisition in the past decades and the related study is numerous. However, there are few studies on the misuse of the two pronouns in oral English for English majors in Chinese universities. This study aims to explore the current situation and characteristics of he/she misuse in oral English of Chinese freshmen majoring in English and analyze the factors that cause the misuse, so as to arouse the learners’ awareness of the error. This study focuses on two research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of he/she misuse in spoken English of Chinese freshmen majoring in English? (2) What are the reasons for the misuse? Based on the selected spoken language materials, this study explores the mixing types and error rate of he/she and analyzes the characteristics of the misuse through data. Through the questionnaire, this thesis study investigates the causes of the misuse. It is found that the mixed use of pronoun he/she is serious in the spoken language of English major freshmen, especially the misuse of “she” into “he”. The factors that cause the misuse are complex, involving mother tongue, attention distribution and working memory, pronunciation relationship, transfer of training, and social environment and personal factors, among which the analysis from articulatory phonetics deserves more attention.

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