Gender and Social Anxiety and the Frequency of SOTs in Undergraduate Students of English Language and Literature

The purpose of this study is to see whether there is any relationship first of all between students’ gender and their SOTs and secondly, between their anxiety level and SOTs. For this aim, 16 male and 16 female undergraduate students of English language and literature studying at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad were selected and No sampling was applied because the groups were intact groups. Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was used to measure their social anxiety level, and a tape recorder which recorded their English speech was utilized to count the number of SOTs in their speech. Besides, there was a checklist to mark their recorded speech and finally Independent Samples T-test was used to analyze the data. The Result of the study revealed that there were no statistically meaningful relationship between gender and the frequency of SOTs and at the same time between anxiety and tongue slips. The findings also confirmed that females are more anxious than males when they are to speak and they use more SOTs in their speech

Keywords:

SOTs , Anxiety , Gender