An Empirical Study On The Acquisition Of Relative Clauses By Chinese Learners Of English As A Foreign Language

This is an empirical study on Chinese learners' acquisition of six types of relative clauses inserted in matrix subject position and matrix object position,with the purpose to test the predictions of previous research hypotheses such as Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis(AHH), Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis(PDH)and SO Hierarchy Hypothesis(SOHH).Employing quantitative method as the principal approach and qualitative method as supplement,this study mainly adopted a grammaticality judgment test,a sentence combination test,a composition test of picture description and a post-hoc interview to collect data from 50 freshmen majoring in English.Data analyzed by SPSS 11.0 yielded the following principal findings: First,results of this study lent partial support to AHH both in terms of accuracy and frequency.Without distinguishing the grammaticality judgment test and the sentence combination test,the accuracy order in terms of mean scores of six types of relative clauses was: GEN＞SU＞IO＞DO＞OPREP＞OCOMP.According to the results of the post-hoc analysis,this study tentatively proposed a three-stage hierarchy in terms of difficulty:GEN/SU＞IO/DO/OPREP＞OCOMP("＞" means "is easier than").As for the "unusual" positioning of GEN in the proposed difficulty hierarchy,this study assumed that certain factors such as the properties of GEN in form,the properties of GEN in function and the instruction focus concerning GEN might jointly make the noticing of GEN more likely to occur,which was essential for the follow-up processing of GEN.Second,PDH found support in sentence combination test and the synthesis of the two tests while found no support in grammaticality judgment test.SOHH was not borne out in sentence combination test and the synthesized results of the two tests but was largely supported in grammaticality judgment test.Third,the effect of RC type and the effect of matrix position displayed themselves differently in the two tests,with a significant main effect both for RC type and for the matrix position in sentence combination test,and only a significant main effect for RC type in grammaticality judgment test.We assumed that task effects might explain this phenomenon,in that sentence combination test might require participants to pay attention to word-order within each RC type and the inserting position of RC in the matrix clause simultaneously, but in grammaticality judgment test participants' attention may largely be focused on RC types.Besides,no interaction effect of these two factors was found in these two tests.Fourth,Chinese learners' non-use of relative clauses does not necessarily mean that they avoid using relative clauses. The interview results indicated that some students did consciously avoid using relative clauses while some others subconsciously underproduced relative clauses.The phenomenon of Chinese learners' non-use of relative clauses cannot be attributed entirely to language background,and language proficiency may also play an essential role.Finally,learners' scores in grammaticality judgment test,in general,were higher than those in sentence combination test,and the difference between the results of the two tests in terms of accuracy was statistically significant.This indicated that learners' receptive knowledge might be better than their productive knowledge,and there would still be room for learners to develop their productive knowledge.The implications of the results for English teaching in China are mainly concerned with the order of teaching relative clauses,the suggestions in encouraging learners to use relative clauses and in improving learners' productive knowledge,etc.