Abstract

This study meant to investigate the effect of two types of explicit grammar instruction on the two tests of Sentence Combining Test (SCT) and Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) in the acquisition of relative clause. Two classes were randomly selected and exposed to one of the treatments − explicit-inductive and explicit-deductive − in which they received instruction about English relative clauses. They were administered three similar but not identical tests namely, one pretest, one posttest, and one delayed posttest containing SCT and GJT. The findings revealed that both groups significantly yielded better in short term learning and long term retention on both tests of SCT and GJT from the pretest to the posttest, but the experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group. Further, both groups had higher learning outcomes on the GJT than on the SCT as a result of the treatment.

Key words: implicit, explicit, explicit-inductive, explicit-deductive, relative clauses