Comprehension of complex sentences by Thai students

The purposes of this research were to find out: 1 the most problematic structures of complex sentences for students’ comprehension and 2) comprehension problems that students have with complex sentences. The subjects were 60 English major students of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Sisaket Rajabhat University in the second semester of academic year 2012. The subjects were the representative of the 1st-4th year selected by quota sampling method.
The instrument used in the investigation was different structure of 30 complex sentences consisting of 9 noun clauses, 12 adjective clauses, and 9 adverbial clauses. The researcher collected data by asking subjects to translate these 30 complex sentences and analyzed by grouping and comparing the percentage of each sentence structures based on the comprehension of the structure.
The results revealed that The most problematic structures of complex sentences for students’ comprehension were reduced adverbial clause functioning as a cause and effect modifier followed by adverbial clause functioning as a cause and effect modifier introduced by “since”, adjective clause whose subordinator is “whose” modifying an NP in the object position, and adjective clause whose whose subordinator is “that” modifying an NP in the subject position, respectively. The comprehension problems that students have with complex sentences were confusing of complex structure, inability of indicating main clauses or subordinate clauses, word to word translation without comprehending the whole sentence, and comprehending sentences based on their first language.