The aim of the paper is to show how slips of the ear can contribute to the understanding of spoken word processing be native speakers and second language learners and to the description of the structure of the mental lexicon for native and second languages. In our experiment, 30 native Russian speakers and 30 Chinese students learning Russian as a second language listened to 100 Russian words and had to write them down. We analyzed the mistakes in the answers of the both groups of participants checking different linguistic and psycholinguistic parameters (phonetic factors, part-of-speech, priming and frequency effects). We found out that the native language of a listener influences the recognition of spoken words both in native and non-native language on the phonetic level. The processing on higher levels is less language specific: we found evidence that the word frequency effect and priming effect are relevant for processing Russian words by both native and non-native speakers.