English relative clauses in science and engineering journal papers: A comparative corpus-based study for pedagogical purposes

• We examine how English relative clauses are used in science and engineering journal papers.
• Results show the frequent use of relative clauses, and high frequency of non-restrictive clauses.
• Extremely high use of ‘that’ over ‘which’ for restrictive relative clauses is also found.
• Some tips for teaching English relative clauses are provided for pedagogical purposes.

This corpus-based study presents how English relative clauses are used in science and engineering journal papers. Relative clauses ensure semantic clarity and textual variety but they cause difficulty to non-native speakers of English due to their diverse uses and functions. With pedagogical purposes in mind, this research investigates how frequently and in what context relative clauses are employed in three representative science and engineering journals, namely CELL, Journal of American Chemical Society, and IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. In addition, relative clauses used in papers of English for Specific Purposes are investigated and compared with those in the science and engineering journal papers, to reveal the similarities and differences between them. Some unique features of relative clauses used in science and engineering journal papers are identified, such as the frequent use of relative clauses, the high frequency of non-restrictive relative clauses in the papers of Journal of American Chemical Society and Journal of Solid-State Circuits, the high proportion of ‘prepositions + which,’ and the extremely high use of ‘that’ over ‘which’ for restrictive relative clauses. Pedagogical suggestions are provided to help science and engineering paper authors and ESP/EAP practitioners use and teach relative clauses in an efficient way.