data and materials

Syntactic processing is believed to aid in sentence comprehension. However, it often requires a prior sentence understanding. This circular logic indicates the limited role of syntactic processing in sentence understanding, raising a question of whether Chinese speakers fully utilize syntactic processing for English sentence comprehension. This study conducts an empirical experiment comprising five sub-experiments with statistical analysis, revealing that many Chinese speakers underutilize syntactic processing to comprehend English sentences. It elucidates three categories of parsing utilization for sentence interpretation: utilization of syntactic processing in sentence comprehension, partial underutilization and complete underutilization of syntactic processing in sentence comprehension. Further exploration of the reasons behind partial and complete underutilization led to the identification of trial and error as a contributing factor. Consequently, this study lays a strong foundation for the development of an innovative parsing method designed to integrate syntactic processing into sentence comprehension, thereby enhancing English sentence comprehension skills for Chinese speakers.