The Acquisition of "Contact clause" concept among the college students (No.2)

Abstract

A Contact clause is one of the grammatical items popular among the learners of English language in Japan, even in the junior and senior high schools. The item is taken up as one of the grammatical teaching items at schools in the course of study published by the ministry of education. The 1st year students of Kisarazu national college of technology (KNCT in short) were examined from the point how much they have acquired the item with some kinds of tests. The result was compared with that of the upper class students and the achievement of sentence structures among eight college students in Kanto District. In KNCT, the contact clause acquisition increase with the rise of grade. About 20% of the 1st year students understand what the contact clauses are. For them six sentence elements (sentential subject, noun complement, relative clause, embedded question, grammatical wh-question, and two wh-questions) were precisely examined from the point of correctness and incorrectness.