Enhanced Processing Instruction and Korean Learners’ Acquisition of English Restrictive Relative Clause

Enhanced Processing Instruction and Korean Learners’ Acquisition of English Restrictive Relative Clause

This study investigated Korean learners’ acquisition of English L2 restrictive relative clauses (RRCs). The study has been developed based on the following theoretical frameworks: Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie, 1977), processing instruction (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993), and input enhancement (Sharwood, 1991). The enhanced processing instruction developed for the study was assumed to help Korean learners recognize structural differences between the two languages. Therefore, the instruction was expected to foster Korean learners’ improvement of use of English L2 RRCs. The purposes of this study were to discover the patterns of Korean learners’ acquisition of English L2 RRCs which are different in grammatical structures from those of their L1, and to learn the effects of the enhanced processing instruction developed for the study. The results of the study led us to the following assumptions. First, Korean learners might acquire English RRCs in the order that the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy suggested. The participants didn’t make any mistakes in subject relative clauses of combining sentences using subject relative pronouns. On the other hand, they made a lot of mistakes in sentence combining using object of preposition relative pronouns. Second, Korean learners of English L2 RRCs were interfered by their L1 grammar knowledge: The differences of relative clause structure between English (head-initial) and Korean (head-final) resulted in their sentence combining without relative pronouns of English. Third, the participants’ performance and attitudes on the English relative clauses have positively changed after the instruction, so the instruction had positive impacts on their grammaticality judgments in English RRCs. However, we learned that the participants were interfered by their L1 grammar knowledge.