A Study On Chinese EFL Learners' Comprehension Of English Slang

Slang is one of the most active and sensitive parts of English language and an effective weapon in communication. It is estimated that there are at least 600,000 English words and 15,000 are slang. The words known by American and English people but may not be wholly used are about 10,000- 20,000. 2,000 of them are slang. Slang accounts for 10%.Slang causes a great difficulty in communication and reading, especially for Chinese EFL learners. Nowadays, slang is widely used in many fields. Now Chinese EFL learners have more chances to access English movies, TV plays, magazines, newspaper and so on. Without some knowledge of slang, one may face great difficulty in understanding these English materials. However, slang is usually not included in the formal college English instruction. Therefore, students have to comprehend slang by themselves in their knowledge and learning strategies. So it is normal, justifiable, and challenging to study Chinese EFL learners'comprehension of English slang.This study investigated the errors made when Chinese EFL learners comprehend unfamiliar English slang. The main problems met by Chinese EFL learners when they comprehend unfamiliar English slang were concluded. Participants consist of 80 first-year English majors at a university in Changchun, China. Think-aloud protocols and questionnaire were adopted as measures for corpus collection and analysis. Results of this study reveal that linguistic competence, culture background knowledge and translation are the main problems that Chinese EFL learners meet when they comprehend unfamiliar English slang. They take 58% of the total errors. The results from the questionnaire match with the results from the think-aloud protocols. Reasons for these problems were analyzed. Suggestions were made according to the results and analysis for the reasons. Results of the current study also suggested a need for larger scale research to conclude the problems.