A Competition Model-Based Study On How Chinese Senior Students Comprehend English Relative Clauses

Relative clause is of special type in English. Studies on comprehending English relative clauses focused mainly on which type of clauses are more complex to comprehend and reasons accounting for the question. Because of the different perspectives of researchers, results of the studies were different. Based on the Competition Model, the present study aims to examine the process and strategies used in comprehending English relative clauses by Chinese senior school student. The research questions include: 1) role of native language in the comprehension of English relative clauses; 2) which type of the clauses are more complex for Chinese senior school students to comprehend; 3) what cues Chinese senior school students rely on to comprehend English relative clauses. In the study, grammaticality judgment task, reaction time technique, agent identification task and interviewing were used. Subjects were 53 Chinese senior school students in Grade Two. The following results were found in the experiments:1). Chinese senior students often rely on native language-strategy while comprehending English relative clauses;2). Object relative clauses are more complex for Chinese senior students to comprehend than subject relative clauses;3). Chinese senior students mainly rely on global cues in the comprehension of English relative clauses;4). Chinese senior students can easily identify the mistakes in ungrammatical word ordeT, but often ignore that in other three cues.After analyzing the above results, the following tentative conclusions are reached: 1) because of limitation of learning time and environment, Chinese senior students can not use cue system in English with facility, and consequently, they often resort to their native language when meeting with difficulty in the comprehension; 2) complexity of English object relative clauses and influence of native language are important reasons leading to the difficulty in comprehending object relative clauses; 3) because of influences of learning time, learning environment and teachers' teaching approaches, etc, grammar consciousness of Chinese senior students is weak, their English interlanguage develops slowly, native language has great effect on their English learning, and consequently, students can not use English grammar rules automatically, which is the main reason resulting in the above results.The paper consists of seven main parts. The first part mainly introduces the research questions, origin of the research, methods and significance of the research, etc. In the second part, based on the review of the previous relevant studies, necessity of the research is stated. The third part is the theoretical framework of the study and the theories involved in the study include the Competition Model, language transfer, analysisof English relative clauses, and analysis and comparison of cue systems in English and Chinese. The fourth part presents the design of experiments in the study, including aims, hypotheses, subjects, instruments, process and results. In the fifth part, reasons lying behind the experiment results are explored. The sixth part explores the implication of the conclusions on English teaching. In the last part, conclusions and limitations of the study are summarized briefly.