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Parsing is thought to aid sentence comprehension and thus precede sentence comprehension. However, in understanding English sentences for Chinese speakers, sentence comprehension is often the prerequisite for parsing and consequently precedes syntactic processing. This process represents an intriguing circular logic, shifting our interest from the conventional topic of the relative time course of syntactic and semantic processing in sentence comprehension to a related but rarely directly discussed topic of the relative time course of syntactic processing and sentence comprehension. By elucidating this circular logic, we reveal and subsequently confirm through empirical experimental and statistical analysis from three perspectives that, in Chinese English learners, syntactic processing often ensues after sentence comprehension. This suggests that parsing often provides limited assistance in sentence understanding. This pattern arises due to the heavy reliance of the parsing method on trial and error, leading to consequences such as trial-caused lag, trial-related paralysis, and trial-induced dizziness. This study not only fills the theoretical gaps regarding the time course between syntactic processing and sentence comprehension among Chinese speakers understanding English sentences but also lays a practical foundation for creating a novel parsing method that operates without prior sentence comprehension, with the potential of rendering syntactic processing meaningful in sentence comprehension for Chinese English learners.