Meaningful Drills and Contextualized Reading Passages to Understand Relative Clauses

Abstract

The current study tries to test the assumption that the use of meaningful drills and contextualized reading comprehension passages lead to better understanding of relative clauses. The study is based on the idea that meaning and contexts are necessary for learning to take place. It also aims to empirically test the effect of meaningful drills proposed by Christina Paulston on the acquisition of relative clauses. A sample of (30) first year undergraduate students of English took part in this study. The participants were divided equally into experimental and control group. The sample performances were matched based on their scores in the pre and posttest. After doing the pretest the experimental students received a short handout with relative clauses presented in short reading passages to read for themselves. Students of the experimental group had to identify and discover for themselves the occurrences of relative clauses in the reading passages. The reading passages are followed by meaningful drills on relative clauses. Three weeks later, the students in both groups took a posttest on relative clauses. Based on the tests results the authors have concluded that inserting context and meaning leads to better understanding of the grammar pattern being investigated.