She or He? Source of Errors in L2 Production of 3rd Person Singular Pronouns by Chinese Speakers of English

A notorious problem in L2 English production is he/she confusion in 3rd person singular pronouns. Even proficient Chinese speakers of L2 English tend to misuse he for she in production, causing communication barrier regarding who is the antecedent. The present study investigates whether this processing problem in L2 production is associated with a few factors being investigated and provides practical solutions in L2 learning and teaching. We employed a story-listening-and-retelling production task to examine the effect of internal and external gender cues to discourse to elicit production by proficient Chinese speakers of L2 English. The results show an effect of gender complexity (i.e., internal cues) but no effect of picture (i.e., external visual cues), indicating gender information in L2 was computed at the conceptual level but not accurately processed for output in production. In addition, we found Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect in producing L2 pronouns without external cues. We discuss our findings in relevant speech production models and present pedagogical implications for EFL/ESL Chinese teachers and learners.