Acquiring English Relative Clauses

Abstract

本文皆在通過英語關條子句的習得，探討學習年限是否會影響不同組別受試者的表現。七十五位台北市立民族國民中學的三年級學生參與此實驗，分為三組:第一組沒有學過兒童美語，第二組平均學過兩年兒童美話，第三組平均學過四年兒童美語。本實驗有三種題型:看圖回答問題( picture-identification ) ，排列句子順序( ordering) ，及是非判斷題(grammaticality judgment) 。研究結果發現，學習年限的確影響受試者的表現，沒學過兒童美語的受試者和學過兒童美語受試者的表現有顯著不同。其次，從受試學生的錯誤句型，亦可看出母語轉換(L1 transfer) 微乎其傲，換言之，在第二語言習得過程中，母語並沒有扮演顯著影響的角色。再者，題型差異方面，研究發現不同題型的確能測出受試者的不同反應。受試者在「排列句子順序」和「是非判斷題」表現的比「看圖回答問題」來得好，但「看圖回答問題」最有鑑別度，最能反映受試者的能力。

The main purpose of the present study is to examine Chinese students' acquisition of English relative cIauses (RCs). Seventy-five Chinese students of Min Tsu Junior High School in Taipei City were asked to participate in the experiment. Based on their number of years of leaming, they were further divided into three groups: Group 1 (students without early immersion in English), Group 11 (students with two years of leaming before they entered junior high school), and Group III (students with four years of leaming before they entered junior high school). Three tasks conceming features of English relativization were designed: picture identification, ordering and gramrnaticality judgment tasks. The results showed that the number of years of leaming had an impact on subjects' comprehension and production of Englishrelative cIauses. It was found that subjects who experienced early immersion outperformed those who did not. Moreover, our subjects' error patterns showed that there was little Ll negative influence. Finally, we argue that the task formats were crucial in determining group variations.