Abstract:
Comprehending utterances in a foreign language may require great efforts on the part of the listeners due to the nature of the speech or some linguistic differences. Therefore, it is not uncommon for them to misperceive what is being said, resulting in errors known as slips of the ear. Although these errors can sound very amusing, they provide more than entertainment as they have the potentials to reveal the listeners’ strategies in coping with the difficulties in perceiving utterances. This presentation aims to describe the slips of the ear performed by Indonesian university students who learned English as a foreign language (EFL). Analysis of the corpus consisting of 1008 data revealed that the EFL learners made phonological, morphological, lexical and sentential errors while attempting to make sense of the expressions spoken by native speakers of English. They misinterpreted the oral input by omitting, adding or substituting the sounds, morphemes, words and sentences.