VISUALIZING SYNTAX: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TREE DIAGRAM-BASED SENTENCE PARSING IN ADDRESSING STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY IN EFL

Siska Bochari, Hastini Hastini

Abstract


Purpose – This study explores how syntax tree diagrams can help English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students better understand sentences that can be interpreted in multiple ways due to their structure. Structural ambiguity often confuses EFL learners, who may struggle to see how a sentence could have different meanings. While ambiguity in language is not new, there has not been much focus on practical ways to teach students how to deal with it.

Methodology – Employing a pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design, this study involved 35 fifth-semester English Study Program students at Tadulako University. Participants received six sessions of instruction using syntax tree-based sentence parsing. Data were collected through a pretest, a post-test, and a structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and paired sample t-tests to determine whether the method had a significant impact.

Findings – The findings verified that students developed better skills to understand ambiguous sentences. The post-test scores exceeded pretest scores, and students demonstrated improved abilities to recognize how different sentence arrangements produce different meanings. The questionnaire results confirmed that students developed increased confidence through the syntax tree method, which helped them understand sentence structure.

Contribution – This research demonstrates that visual tools, such as a syntax tree, provide valuable benefits for teaching English syntax to students. This research demonstrates that showing students sentence structure through visualization helps them understand complex grammar rules better. The findings present practical information for teachers who want to develop better classroom methods for teaching ambiguous sentence structures

Keywords


Syntax Tree Diagrams, Structural Ambiguity, EFL Syntax Instruction, Sentence Parsing

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ajaj, I. E. (2022). Investigating the Difficulties of Learning English Grammar and Suggested Methods to Overcome Them. Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities, 29(6), 45–58. https://doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.29.6.2022.24

Ali, S. W., Bay, I. W., & Mufatiroh, I. (2023). Syntactic Tree Diagram: Students’ Problems and the Causes. International Journal of English Linguistics, Literature, and Education (IJELLE), 5(1), 68–76. https://doi.org/doi :10.32585/ijelle.v5i1.3717

Amna, S. (2021). An Analysis of Syntactical Errors and Mistakes Found in English Oral Presentation. Lesson Journal: Language, Applied Linguistics, and Education Journal, 3(1), 9–12. https://doi.org/10.35134/jlesson.v3i1.1

Bai, J., Wang, Y., Chen, Y., Yang, Y., Bai, J., Yu, J., & Tong, Y. (2021). Syntax-BERT: Improving Pre-trained Transformers with Syntax Trees. Proceedings of the 16th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Main Volume, 3011–3020. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2021.eacl-main.262

Carnie, A. (2021). Syntax: A Generative Introduction (Fourth Edition). Willey-Blackwell.

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2023). Research Design. In SAGE Publications (6th Edition). SAGE Publications.

Dzakiah, & Asmawati, N. (2023). Fostering EFL Students’ Performance in English Syntax through Syntactic Tree Diagram Application. LETS Journal of Linguistics and English Teaching Studies, 4(2), 91–99. https://doi.org/10.46870/lets.v4i2.523

Fei, H., Ren, Y., & Ji, D. (2020). Improving Text Understanding via Deep Syntax-Semantics Communication. Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics Findings of ACL: EMNLP 2020, 84–93. https://doi.org/https://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.findings-emnlp.8

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Hyams, N., Amberber, M., Cox, F., & Thornton, R. (2022). An Introduction to Language: Australian and New Zealand 10th Edition. Cengage.

Huang, D. (2019). The Potential of Sentence Trees in English Grammar Teaching. English Language Teaching, 12(3), 178. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v12n3p178

Khan, R. M. I., Shahbaz, M., Kumar, T., & Khan, I. (2020). Investigating Reading Challenges Faced by EFL Learners at the Elementary Level. Register Journal, 13(02), 277–292. https://doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v13i2.277-292

Lee, S. Y., Scheinberg, R., Shore, A., & Agrawal, A. (2025). Who Relies More on World Knowledge and Bias for Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution : Humans or LLMs ? Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, 1, 3484–3498. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2025.naacl-long.177

Mrini, K., Farcas, E., & Nakashole, N. (2021). Recursive Tree-Structured Self-Attention for Answer Sentence Selection. Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing, 4651–4661. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2021.acl-long.358

Nakamura, C., Arai, M., Hirose, Y., & Flynn, S. (2020). An Extra Cue Is Beneficial for Native Speakers but Can Be Disruptive for Second Language Learners : Integration of Prosody and Visual Context in Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(January), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02835

Nurlatifah, L., & Yusuf, F. N. (2022). Students ’ Problems in Writing Analytical Exposition Text in EFL Classroom Context. English Review: Journal of English Education, 10(3), 801–810. https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v10i3.6633

Pavey, E. L. (2010). The Structure of Language: An Introduction to Grammatical Analysis. Cambridge University Press.

Roberts, I. (2023). Phrase-Structure Rules and Constituency Tests. In Beginning Syntax (pp. 51–77). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009023849

Saleh, Y. M., & Hasan, S. H. (2021). Linguistic Ambiguity of Modification. 26(2), 227–235. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4678886

Tallerman, M. (2025). Understanding Syntax (6th Edition). Routledge.

Wang, Q. (2010). Drawing Tree Diagrams: Problems and Suggestions. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1(6), 926–934. https://doi.org/10.4304/jltr.1.6.926-934

Williyan, A. (2022). Language Ambiguity in EFL Learners’ Narrative Texts: A Semantic Discourse Analysis. LET: Linguistics, Literature and English Teaching Journal, 12(2), 352–369. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.18592/let.v12i2.7439

Winarta, I. B. G. N., & Rahmanu, I. W. E. D. (2020). Students’ Syntax Error in Making English Conversation: An Error Analysis Study. Yavana Bhasha: Journal of English Language Education, 3(2), 19–26. https://doi.org/10.25078/yb.v3i2.1708

Zapata-Leal, C. E., & Ávila-Portuanto, M. C. (2021). Linguistic Awareness of the Prepositional Phrase Complexities in the English as a Foreign Language Context. Revista Electronica Educare, 25(2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.25-2.29

Zhang, Y. (2022). Revelations on Grammar Teaching Based on an Analysis of the Syntactic Structure of Transformational Generative Grammar and Metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature




DOI: https://doi.org/10.36987/jes.v12i5.7543

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2025 Siska Bochari, Hastini Hastini

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Lisensi Creative Commons
Jurnal Eduscience (JES) by LPPM Universitas Labuhanbatu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY - NC - SA 4.0)