Gender Misuse Of Third Singular Pronouns Of Different L1EFL Learners In Oral Production

The thesis investigates into the acquisition of third singular pronoun genders bydifferent L1learners, Chinese, Korean and French EFL learners, and tries to explainthe acquisition of L2parameters and the fossilization of learners’ interlanguages byusing the selective fossilization theory. That is to analyze in the selectivefossilization perspective the phenomenon that Chinese and Korean speakers ofEnglish are prone to misusing the genders of third singular pronouns and at the sametime L1-French speakers make much less errors. On the other hand, the experimentconducted in the thesis provides empirical evidence for the theory.Chinese researchers have long noticed the frequent gender misuse of third singularpronouns in Chinese EFL learners’ oral production, especially the misuse of “he”and “she” and have done much work in trying to explain it. The gender misusefrequently appears among students and teachers, elementary learners and advancedlearners, in easy context as well as in complex context. However, this thesis finds outthat not only Chinese but also Korean EFL learners have problem with the gendersin English orally and notably much fewer mistakes can be found in French speakers’production. To be specific, the findings of the thesis are:(1) Subjects of different L1s are all aware of gender discrimination of English thirdsingular pronouns.(2) French Group do not make any gender errors in English oral production whileChinese and Korean Group cannot avoid making such errors in spite that they are ofdifferent English levels, that tasks are of different difficulty levels to subjects and that even only one gender is related in the task.(3) In picture narration task, the error rates order is G3French <G2Korean <G1Chinese.(4) In free talk task, the error rates order is G1French <G1Chinese <G2Korean, alittle different from that of the picture narration task.(5) Both Chinese and Korean subjects tend to misuse “he”“him” and”his” for “she”“her” and “her” in two tasks with an exception of Korean subjects in free talk task.The finding (2) is in consistent with the prediction of selective fossilization theorythrough analyzing the acquisition and fossilization zone, that is, the markedness ofL1and the robustness of L2input. Thus, it is reasonable to draw a conclusion thatthe selective theory is attested to be true and can explain the phenomenon perfectly.