Abstract

English learning has been very popular in the world, especially in China. However, there are quantities of problems occurring in the process of study, among which the phenomenon of the tongue slips is of the most common one. This paper mainly explores the tongue slips of Chinese non-English majors and gives explanations on the causes of their tongue slips. It also gives suggestions on how to improve the students’ spoken English. In  this paper, the significance and the definition of the tongue slips are introduced as well as the the literature review including both overseas researches and domestic researches.  According to the data collected from the 60 Chinese non-English majors, this paper comes to a conclusion that there are 8 types of tongue slips of Chinese non-English majors. This paper also makes an analysis of the  causes of such tongue slips and gives 3 suggestions on how to overcome such such tongue slips. Last but not the least, this paper restates the significance of this subject and gives encouragement to the non-English majors in China of their learning of English.

KEYWORDS:non-English major; tongue slips; oral English proficiency; data analysis; causes

摘　要

英语学习已经成为当今世界的一种趋势，尤其在中国。然而，人们在英语学习的过程中，却出现了很多的问题。而口误现象就是其中最普遍的问题之一。本文旨在研究中国非英语专业大学生的口误现象，并分析出现这些口误现象的原因。同时，本文还对如何提高分英语专业学生的英语口语水平提出了建议。本文首先介绍了该研究的意义以及口误的定义；接着，本文回顾了海内外学者在这一领域所作的研究及成果；另外，本文抽取了一部分非英语专业学生进行了实际研究，收集了大量的数据，因此，本文对该项研究的方法以及研究对象进行了分析与描述；本文最重要的部分是对主收集到的数据进行了分析，并对口误进行分类，并归纳产生这些口误的原因；最后本文再次阐明了该项研究的重要性。

关键词:非英语专业；口误；英语口语习得；数据分析；原因

1     Introduction
    This thesis describes and classifies the phenomenon of the tongue slips of Chinese non-English majors, and gives explanations on the causes of their tongue slips.
1.1    Significance of the topic
As English becomes more and more popular in the world, most of Chinese students are learning it at early age. The purpose of learning English is to keep pace with the process of globalization.. However, not many Chinese students can speak English accurately, even when they are at university level. China’s system of education pays too much attention on students' papers and test scores, and attaches little importance to oral English. As a result, many of university students make various kinds of mistakes in their oral English. Therefore, the study of this topic is of great significance, since it explores the causes of tongue slip and gives suggestions on how to improve the students' spoken English.