| Attributive clause, also named relative clause, is one of the most important issuesin the field of grammar teaching. Many scholars have conducted researchesconcerning relative clause teaching and acquisition from various aspects, such as erroranalysis, language transfer and etc. For example, a dominant hypothesis---NounPhrase Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis proposed by E. Keenan and B. Comrie in1977explored the difficulty order of relative clause acquisition. In this paper I want toconduct my research on relative clause teaching from the aspect of action research,one way of reflective teaching, which is an effective way to help teachers reflect ontheir own teaching experiences and solve the problems they find in their teachingpractice, thus engaging teachers in the process of development.This paper conducts an action research on relative clause teaching in FengchengMiddle School, a senior middle school in Jiangxi Province. Questionnaires, interviews,teaching logs and tests are employed as elicitation measures to explore all subjects’acquisition of relative clause.Research findings reveal that with observation in the process of classroomteaching and teachers’ reflection and interview after class, teachers can get feedbackon time to realize and solve some problems they find existing in their teachingpractices. Meanwhile, some new teaching methods can be adopted to improve theunsatisfied situation, in relation to how to collect materials that attract students’interest, how to apply some good ideas to group discussion, how to organizecompetition or even how to play some games. The study finds that the adoption ofreflective teaching can not only stimulate students’ interest in grammar learning,especially relative clause learning, but also improve students’ achievements in theirexaminations.There are also some limitations existing as to data collecting, thus the generalization of the result achieved needs to be validated. Besides, some variablessuch as students’ attitude, motivation and learning experiences are not considered indetail for the limited time span. In addition, further longitudinal researches concerningthe evaluation of students’ mastery of relative clause in the aspects of spoken andlistening English are to be done. |
