Relative Clause Teaching For EFL Learners

The relative clause is one of the most difficult grammatical items for learners in senior high school. This study aims to examine two well-known hypotheses-the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) and the Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis (PDH), which predict the acquisition difficulty order of relative clauses. Besides, to reflect on teaching is another way to find out reasons for inefficient learning of relative clauses. Many previous studies have focused on testing the two hypotheses, but few studies were conducted over Chinese senior high school students. Chinese senior high school students spend much time on learning relative clauses but the result is not satisfying, so it is vital to help them improve learning outcome. One reason could be the traditional way teachers use to deal with learners’errors. Teachers can not improve their teaching through learners’errors, so learners’errors could be a good route to reflect on teaching and thus help with learners’learning. This study also focuses on other noun modifiers apart from the relative clause and the necessity of the relative clause. The latter has always been overlooked in other studies. One hundred and twenty-three students from a rural senior high school participated in this study. They took the sentence combination test and the grammaticality judgment test for eliciting their production and comprehension knowledge to the relative clause. Effective data from fifty subjects were analyzed via the Statistical Package for Social Sciences.The results are summarized as follows:(1) This study support the PDH strongly and the NPAH partially;(2) This study corroborates the claim that the NPAH and the PDH should be complementary rather than competing;(3) The effects of relative clause types become weaker in the comprehension test;(4) When teaching relative clauses, teachers do not pay enough attention to learners’prior knowledge, which is vital for them to learn more complex items. Besides, teachers should try to get a comprehensive understanding to the relative clause. In view of these findings, this study concludes by proposing some pedagogical implications for teachers to better help learners in acquiring the relative clause.