The acquisition of English relative clauses by university students of English in Jordan

Abstract EN

This study investigated the acquisition of English relative clauses by Jordanian EFL learners.

It also examined whether the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (NPAH) for the acquisition of relative clauses proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977) is applicable to Jordanian EFL learners.

Moreover, the study investigated whether there is a relationship between participants' production of relative clauses and their proficiency level.

Sixty undergraduate students of English completed a sentence combination task.

In general, the results indicated that Jordanian EFL learners are good at producing relative clauses.

However, their performance was influenced by their proficiency level whereby advanced learners outperformed intermediate learners.

The results also showed that the NPAH effect is not applicable to Jordanian EFL learners regardless of their proficiency level.