English Relative Clauses: What Malay Learners Know and Use

Second langu age (L2) learn ers have problems when acqUlnng re lative clauses (Hawkins andChan 1997; Wong 1999) . Th is stu dy examines and attempts to ex plain the learn ers competencein the use of relat ive clauses. The L2 learn ers are Ll (firs t language) speakers of Malay who weregauged to have elementary proficiency in English by the Oxford Placement Test. A grammaticalityjudgment task (GJT) was administered to determine the subjects ability to distinguish betweenthe grammatical and ungrammatical forms of relative clauses. The task revealed the students acquired competence in th is particular area. This competence is further examined in the contextof a p roduction task wh ich gauged their ab ility to form re lative cla uses throug h sentencecombining. Resul ts from the GJT showed consistently low scores for a variety of extractions fromvarious positions in the formation of re lative clauses. This is further supported by the resultsobtained from the sentence-eombination task where the production of correct sentences usingre lative clauses was the focus. In sum, the Malay learners failed to recognise and produceappropriate relative clause constructions. The data confirmed other findings that relative clausesare a so urce of di fficul ty for these L2 learn ers and these fin dings have pe dagogic implications forthe learn ing of this essential grammar component.