Teaching English Relative Clauses to Iraqi Secondary School EFL Students: Full Comprehension Through Translating Meanings of In-Text Relative Pronouns
Keywords:
English as a foreign language, relative clauses, translation, language acquisitionAbstract
This paper is an attempt to shed light on why Iraqi EFL Secondary School students lack full mastery of the English relative clauses use. It is understandable that they are non-native speakers of English language, but still they are studying English language as of the fifth primary school. Besides, Iraqi secondary school students, as others across the world, live in a digital world, and every possible means of communication is available. Therefore, the mission of acquisition English language grammatical structures is reachable. To accomplish this study, two groups were selected. A number of (40) learners from Abi al-Khaseeb Secondary School for Boys, Experimental Group (EG), was selected to be the subjects of this study, randomly selected. The Control Group (CG), 40 learners, as well randomly selected, from the same school. The Experimental Group’s respondents were under a two-minute interview session each, and then given a ten-question questionnaire (Appendix A). Results of the two study tools (an interview & questionnaire) made it clear that EFL English language students suffer a lot during the 45-minute class period as they are given short time focus on such important segments of language acquisition. Also, the study two groups took the Achievement Test, and results revealed a clear distinction between both groups’ scores. The learners of the EG got high scores between (70-90), compared to learners of the CG, where the latter obtained scores between (40-75).
Besides, results disclosed reality of poor attention paid to communication among EFL English language learning inside classroom atmosphere. On that ground, it is recommended that teachers of English language shall teach English language structures (Relative Clauses) to Iraqi EFL students systematically and in a friendly communication atmosphere among EFL learners and between a teacher and EFL leaners.
