The effects of explicit instruction by using phrase structure rules on acquisition of noun clauses

The aim of the study was to examine the effectiveness of using phrase structure rules to teach noun clauses. Noun clauses are considered a complex structure that poses difficulty for students to comprehend the sentences. This study focused on using phrase structure rules to teach noun clauses functioning as a subject, an object of a verb and an oblect of the preposition. The participants in the study were 36 grade 12 students at Suraphinphitthaya School, a secondary in Lamduan District in Surin in 1st semester, academic year 2018. The selection of participants was based on purposive sampling technique. There were 18 sessions in this study. The exoeriment was conducted within the 50-minute class period for each session. The experiment began with students taking a 25-item pretest. Then, the explicit instruction using phrase structure rules to teach noun clauses was conducted for 16 sessions. After the experiment, the participants took the posttest which was the same as the pretest. After that, the semi-structured interview was administered.
Rusults showed that the explicit instruction using phrase structure rules helped improve the participants’ knowledge of noun clauses. In other words, explicit instruction using phrase structure rules could help the participants acquire noun clauses. The results of the semi-structured interview revealed that the students’ opinions towards the explicit instruction using phrase strucutures rules were quite positive. Many of them said that phrase structure rules helped them understand the structures and functions of noun clauses, which helped improve their reading skills.