Language Transfer In Teachers’ College English Majors’Acquisition Of English Relative Clauses

The acquisition of English relative clauses (ERCs) had aroused the author’s great interest, since the career of the author, as an English teacher, started eleven years ago in Zhaotong Teachers’College (ZTTC). Owing to the great differences between English relative clauses and Chinese relative clause construction, English majors in ZTTC meet with much difficulty in acquiring English relative clauses, which endows the present study with special significance.A few features about previous studies stand out among others through analyzing relevant researches on the acquisition of English relative clauses by Chinese learners. The differences in semantic function should be paid more attention to than those in form and non-restrictive relative clauses (NRCs) should receive the same attention as RRCs. Perception and production should be taken into account comprehensively. In previous research, the "avoidance" or "underproduction" phenomenon is much more researched than the corresponding "overproduction" Based on previous studies and the academic capacity of the author, the current study is designed to investigate the acquisition of English relative clauses by the English majors from a teachers’college in an underdeveloped area from the perspective of language transfer, focusing on the production errors in their acquisition of English restrictive relative clauses (RRCs) and the positive and negative transfers from the students’mother tongue (i.e. Chinese) in their acquisition of English NRCs.In the current study, by comparing English and Chinese relative clause constructions and their acquisition, four hypotheses are put forward as follows:(1) Positive transfer may lead to easy acquisition and correct production of English sentential relative clauses (SRCs).(2) Negative transfers may make the learners have difficulty in distinguishing RRCs and NRCs.(3) Negative transfers may lead to the preference of using adverbial clauses over semi-adverbial relative clauses (SARCs) and the tendency of producing compound sentences or two simple clauses instead of English continuative relative clauses (CRCs).(4) The learners may make errors in using relative words to realize English relative clauses.The data used in this study were collected among69college students majoring in English Education in their last year of study at ZTTC. These data were collected through three elicitation tasks, including a translation test, a sentence combining test, and a grammaticality judgment test. The analysis of the data verified all of the above four hypotheses.This study is of some significance to the teaching and acquisition of English relative clauses by English majors from teachers’colleges. Most of them are supposed to be English teachers after graduation. Being fully aware of the similarities and differences between English and Chinese relative clause construction, they can try any means possible to design exercises and classroom activities so as to reveal in what aspects the learners should improve and adjust the teaching approaches accordingly, which is essential to the ultimate acquisition of English relative clauses.