Effects Of L2 Proficiency And Working Memory On EFL Learners’ Processing Of Relative Clause Attachment Ambiguity

As an important point of sentence processing research,the study of attachment preference of ambiguous relative clauses(e.g.,NP1 + of + NP2 + relative clauses)has received much academic attention.Probing the L2 learners’ preference of the ambiguous sentences can give an insight into the deep mechanism and influencing factors in L2 syntactic processing.It has been suggested that in the previous studies,among all individual factors,L2 proficiency and working memory have received the most attention,but also the most controversy.In addition,their interactive effect on syntactic processing remains uncertain.In terms of research methods,most of the previous researches adopted self-pacing reading to investigate learners’ syntactic processing mechanism,but this method itself has certain limitations.In view of this,the study investigated the effects of L2 proficiency and working memory on the processing of relative clause attachment ambiguity with the help of eye-tracking technology,thus seeking to explore the individual factors in L2 syntactic processing.The present study conducted a two-factor experimental design of 2(L2 proficiency:high/low)× 2(working memory capacity: high/low),and both L2 proficiency and working memory belong to between-group variables.In order to examine the English proficiency and working memory capacity of the participants,30 Chinese EFL learners were selected to complete the Quick Placement Test and Reading-span Task,and then they were divided into four groups based on their test scores.In the main experiment,all participants were asked to complete an online sentence reading task with ambiguous relative clauses.The experimental items mainly focus on the complex noun phrase structure connected by “of”.In order to probe the attachment preference of the participants,all the experimental sentences were adjusted as NP1 or NP2 attachment in advance based on the syntactic knowledge,subject-verb agreement.When participants read ambiguous sentences with NP1 or NP2 attachment,the first reading time,the regression path reading time and the total reading time in areas of interest were recorded by the eye-tracker.The results show that 1)L2 proficiency and working memory both have no significant effect on the attachment preference of ambiguous relative clauses,but exert the effect on the online sentence processing rate by L2 learners.2)Learners’ L2 proficiency can mediate the inhibitory effect of working memory on the attachment ambiguity processing of relative clauses.And the smaller the working memory capacity of leaners,the more significant the regulating effect of L2 proficiency;similarly,working memory can also mediate the impact of L2 proficiency on the attachment processing.The lower the L2 proficiency,the more significant the regulatory effect of working memory.3)Chinese EFL learners tend to attach the relative clause to the first noun(NP1)in complex noun phrases when processing syntactically ambiguous sentences.By investigating Chinese EFL learners’ processing of relative clause attachment ambiguity,the thesis explores the constraints of two individual factors,L2 proficiency and working memory,on sentence processing,and reveals L2 syntactic processing mechanism,which is of great significance to the theoretical construction of L2 acquisition and syntactic processing as well as the practice of foreign language learning and teaching.