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1、中国初中生学习英语关系从句的研究Chapter One Introduction1.1Motivations of the StudyMany linguists believe that language universals and linguistic typology can beapplied to second language acquisition. Comrie (1981) suggests that the use ofcommon tjology in the study of second language acquisition (SLA) can confirmw
2、hether these universals exist. Hawkins (1987) believes that the implicationaluniversals can be used to predict the order of acquisition. These language universalsnot only are falsifiable in practice, but may also explain the process and nature oflanguage acquisition. Greenberg (1991: 37) also states
3、 that modem language typologyhas been able to develop specific results in the form of a typical implication, whichso far has played a major role in providing research hypotheses for SLA study.Studies in SLA can not only find common ground between the first language (LI) andthe second language (L2)，b
4、ut investigate the difference between the two languagesand the fundamental causes. What s more，it also allows us to explore the impact ofLI on SLA process as well as the language development and the transfer trajectoryfrom LI to L2.During the last four decades, the subject of relative clauses attrac
5、ts extensiveattention in linguistic studies. Most of these studies focus on English children s LIacquisition of English relative clauses. However，research about the acquisition ofrelative clauses by L2 learners (especially primary learners) whose mother tongue isChinese is comparatively fewer.&helli
6、p;.1.2Purposes and Significance of the StudyThe main purpose of the present study is to investigate the acquisition of Englishrelative clauses by Chinese learners in junior high school and discuss the differencesbetween two teaching methods (explicit and implicit instruction) for learners tocomprehe
7、nd the relative clauses. To be specific, the following objectives will beachieved.Firstly, the present research not only aims at investigating the acquisition ofrelative clauses but also intends to integrate the element of word order into the studybecause there exist plentiful differences between th
8、e word order of Chinese andEnglish. The combination of the second language acquisition and word order studywould be a novel research perspective.Secondly, the study plans to conduct instructions among junior high schoolstudents who are paid less attention because most of the studies on the acquisiti
9、on ofrelative clauses target at students or adults whose English are more proficient.However, the investigation of the students whose knowledge of relative clauses is atan earlier stage would be more meaningful.Thirdly, from the aspect of research method, most of the existing experiments arecarried
10、out through language tests (e.g. sentence translation, sentence combinations,grammatical judgment) but the learners active usage of the knowledge is neglected.Therefore, a spontaneous output test (the composition writing task) is designed toinduce the subjects to produce the language materials for a
11、nalyzing.….Chapter Two Literature Review2.1 Studies on Second Language Acquisition of Relative ClausesThis part attempts to review previous studies on second language acquisition ofRCs abroad and home and gives a brief summary and comment based on theliterature.Referring to the definition of
12、relative clauses, linguists define it differently fromvarious aspects. In their Dictionary of Language and Linguistics，Hartman & Stork(1972) states that the relative clause is a subordinate clause guided by a relativepronoun or adverb. This definition targets at English relative clauses. Andrews
13、 (1985)，from a more comprehensive aspect, defines relative clause as a subordinate clausewhich modifies all parts of the sentence except itself and is semantically consistentwith the modified constituent. The modified part is the head noun while thesemantically equivalent subordinate clause is the r
14、elative clause. Andrews definitionis no longer restricted to English but appropriate for other languages.All in all, relative clauses hold different features in different languages. Comrie(1981) believes in Asian languages RCs should be regarded as attributive clauseswhile in European languages, RCs
15、 keep the original name for the former ones whichdo not involve argument structure and do not have filler-gap dependency. In thisthesis，we talk about English relative clauses.….2.2 Studies on Differences of Word Order Between English and ChineseWord order 1 plays an essential role in conveyin
16、g important grammatical information. Abundant morphological changes can be found in some languages (e.g. Indo-European languages) in which the grammatical meanings are expressed withoutemphasizing the importance of word order in a sentence. Modem standard Englishlays a great emphasis on language for
17、m, thus most of its sentence types have a fixedword order. However, unlike English, a Chinese sentence is meaningless without theassistance of word order in most cases. This part attempts to review Chinese andEnglish word order differences, especially in RCs (An, 2006). It is well-known that from th
18、e syntactic level, the fimdamental sentence structureof English is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) while Chinese has both similarities anddifferences with SVO and SOV (Subject-Object-Verb，e.g. Japanese) language，whicharouse great interests of researchers at home and abroad. For instance, Shyu (2001)concer
19、ns SOV word order in Mandarin Chinese. With the assumption of basic SVOword order 1，Shyu proposes movement account for deriving SOV word order 2.Chapter Three Experimental Design and Methodology.213.1Research Questions.213.2Research Methodology.213.2.1Methods in the Tests.223.2.2Methods in the Instr
20、uction.243.3Subjects.263.4Test Materials.273.5Research Procedures.293.6Data Collection and Scoring.31Chapter Four Results and Discussion.334.1Results and Discussion for the Two Tests.334.2Analyses and Discussion for the Compositions.69Chapter Five Conclusion.735.1Major Findings of the Present Study.
21、735.2Implications of the Present Study.745.3Limitations and Recommendation for the Future Research.76Chapter Four Results and Discussion4.1 Results and Discussion for the Two TestsIn this part，the results from the pre-test and the post-test are presented anddiscussed. From the vertical view，differen
22、ces between the three test groups areexamined while the discrepancies between the RC sentence types and the relationshipbetween the two tasks are analyzed in the horizontal way. In addition, the data fromthe two tests are put together to make fiirther comparisons. In the Multiple Choice Task, the su
23、bjects in the control group and theexperimental group were required to choose any option or options they supposed werecorrect. Through the scoring methods mentioned in 3.6, the general performance ofthe control and the experimental groups is illustrated in Table 4.1 (A detailedstatistical table is s
24、hown in Appendix 7). There exist negative values in the scoresbecause of the particular marking methods. The range of the total score value is from-21 to 21. What s more, two decimal places are reserved in all the cases. /….ConclusionThe present study is a research on junior high school stude
25、nts acquisition ofrelative clauses through the implicit and explicit instructions. In this chapter, themajor findings of the research are firstly presented and then the implications andlimitations of the study are then put forward. The present research aims to investigate the current state of knowle
26、dge about RCsby Chinese junior high school students, and through two different instructing methods,which are the implicit instruction and the explicit instruction, the study attempts toexplore the differences of the two instructing approaches and to make suggestions forthe future teaching of RC know
27、ledge.Generally, the subjects in the experiment hold a comparatively same initial state ofthe knowledge of RCs before the instructions. However, the subjects knowledgeabout the RC sentence types are different, which reveals the difficulty order of thefour RC sentence types. When concerning the resul
28、ts of the Multiple Choice Task,which represents the general knowledge of the sentence types, we discover that theOO type is the easiest to comprehend, then followed by the SS type. The SO and OStypes are more difficult to understand. The difficulty order (from the hardest to theeasiest) can be shown
29、 as: SO/OS SS OO. When we consider the result of theSentence Structure Analysis Task，which indicates the subjects comprehension of thestructure of RC sentences, it is detected that the structure of the OS type is easiest tograsp while the other three are relatively more difficult to understand.Reference (omitted)