Interlanguage, the Monitor, and Sentence Combining.

An experiment on relative clause formation involving Cantonese students who were learning English was conducted. The study sought to determine whether sentence combining exercises would help Chinese students construct long relative clauses instead of the short relative clauses that exist in their first language. For the experimental group each student wrote two impromptu essays, worked on sentence combining exercises for 29 days, and then wrote a third and fourth impromptu essay. The control group students did not undertake the sentence combining exercises. The task was designed to avoid self-monitoring of the writing. Attrition of the experimental group made analysis of the experiment difficult. The following results from the small number of students who completed the experiment were obtained: the control group wrote the same number of relative clauses at the beginning and end and matched the experimental group's initial efforts; and the experimental group (five students) wrote shorter sentences, as measured by number of words per T unit, and wrote fewer relatives. (SW)