Analysis of Chinese Students’ Misuse of English Gender Pronouns

Abstract

Previous research has analyzed Chinese EFL learners' misuse of English gender pronouns. This study aims to explore Chinese native speaking students' gender pronoun errors in detail, and to find out effective approaches to reduce the error rate. The study collected information of gender pronouns use by Chinese and English native speaking students through narrating stories in four short videos. The result showed that after being given corrective feedback, Chinese students' error rate significantly decreased, indicating proper feedback could positively affect pronoun acquisition. Based on the data collected from the experiment, this thesis also investigated the self-correction phenomenon and the relationship between participants' gender and error type. This study found that Chinese students' misuse of gender pronouns is possibly the carryover comes from the Chinese language. Additionally, the error could be influenced by speakers' English proficiency and word choices.