Processing and comprehension of L2 English relative clauses by Farsi speakers

Knowledge of English is essential for many people. Learning English may be more difficult if the grammar and vocabulary of your native language differ much from English. Also, the amount of exposure to English may play a role in English proficiency. Speakers of Farsi show great difficulty in learning English, compared with for example speakers of Dutch. This thesis investigates why this is the case, by looking at the processing and comprehension of relative clauses such as “The teacher that the student insulted became very angry”. The thesis shows that the grammatical structure of Farsi relative clauses differs greatly from that of English relative clauses. However, a corpus study that we conducted shows that the use of relative clauses in Farsi is very similar to English. Also, experiments in which participants’ eye movements were recorded, showed that the reading pattern of Farsi relative clauses by native speakers is similar to what has been found for native speakers of English. In English however, speakers of Farsi have difficulty processing and comprehending relative clauses. This can be explained by transfer from Farsi: Participants apply the rules of Farsi when they read relative clauses in English. This often leads to incorrect interpretations of the relative clause. Interestingly, speakers of Dutch, who are more proficient in English, did not encounter the same problems, although the grammatical structure of Dutch and Farsi relative clauses is similar. Thus, the native language influences processing and comprehension of English, but this effect diminishes when proficiency increases