Teaching relative clauses: how to handle a bitter lemon for Japanese learners and English teachers

In this article we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of what has become the standard approach to teaching relative clauses, that is, the two‐ sentence connection. In order to overcome the disadvantages of this method, we propose what we call ‘the hierarchical teaching method’. This method begins by introducing noun phrases that contain relative clauses, before comparing them with similar structures in the learner's first language. Before producing a full sentence, it practices using noun phrases in communicative contexts by fitting them into appropriate positions in a sentence. We also show an experimental study, which demonstrates that the new method is more effective than the standard one. Lastly, we will give some practical advice on how to implement this method in the classroom.