The Role of Processing Instruction in the Acquisition of English Restrictive Relative Clauses by L1 Saudi Arabic Speakers

Abstract

The acquisition of English restrictive relative clauses (RRCs) has been studied extensively in recent years suggesting difficulties facing Arabic learners of English (Zagood 2012; Shaheen, 2013; Alroudhan 2016; Abumelhah, 2016). The two languages differ with respect to the use of overt versus covert relative complementizers and the use of agreement features. Meanwhile, the detailed focus on form and processing issues related to relative clauses is not often found in English language instruction. The aim is to use descriptions and findings from current generative second language acquisition research on the linguistic properties of English RRCs to investigate the effectiveness of Processing Instruction (PI) in the language classroom. The acquisition of morphosyntax has been addressed by VanPatten’s Input Processing (IP) model (VanPatten and Oikkenon, 1996; VanPatten, 2004; VanPatten and Williams, 2007), based on how linguistics and cognitive processing interact during language comprehension and asserts that L2 problems with morphosyntax may be connected to the way learners distribute attentional resources when processing input. The IP posits that difficulties in morphosyntax in second language acquisition may be linked to the allocation of attentional resources by learners during input processing. To mitigate these difficulties, PI, as described by VanPatten (2004), consists of two types of input activities: Referential activities, 3 which require learners to concentrate on a specific form and its meaning, and affective activities, which involve multiple examples of the target form but direct learners' attention towards the meaning of the sentences in which the form is used. Thus far, these two forms of PI activity have been regarded as a single teaching technique, and few empirical investigations have been undertaken to examine their distinct instructional effects. By implementing a experimental design, this study therefore aimed to investigate the effects of PI, especially referential and affective in isolation in the acquisition of English RRCs by beginner Saudi learners of L2 English. Four experimental groups were used, along with a control group. The study started out by defining the difficulties in acquiring English RRCs by L2 learners and discover the features that are proposed to involve feature re-assembly difficulties such as syntactic restrictions on the definite article when the noun is modified by a relative clause. Three research instruments were used to assess the participants progress: a Grammaticality Judgment Task, a Picture-Cued Task, and a Translation Task conducted as pre-tests, post-tests, and delayed post-tests seven weeks later. In this study, a quantitative (pre-tests, post-tests and delayed post-tests) measure was used to investigate learner improvement. The quantitative data were analysed through descriptive statistics, Repeated Measures ANOVA tests, and t-tests. The initial findings show that referential activities resulted in improvement in the correct use of English RRCs and sustained long term effect not found with affective activities, Traditional Instruction and control group. The second findings suggested that the ERA instruction resulted also in improvement on the four conditions: a definite relative clause with an overt relative complementizer; a definite relative clause with a null relative complementizer; an indefinite relative clause with an overt relative complementizer; and an indefinite relative clause with a null relative complementizer and sustained long term effect. Therefore, this study suggests that the ERA instruction, especially referential activities, for the problematic contexts is the type of instruction that is recommended to accelerate the re-assembly process and recovery from L1 transfer to develop the targeted L2 knowledge. Moreover, an implication of this study is that the claims of previous PI studies regarding the main causative components for its effectiveness require more refined explanation. The findings of the present study thus make different contributions; these are contributions to knowledge and theory (e.g. Processing Instruction and GenSLA research). This work adapted MOGUL as a language development model to bridge the gap between PI and GenSLA research. MOGUL allows for a modular view, allowing the development of both formal and functional components of language in various knowledge stores.