61 sentence type one, and another student in complex sentence type two. These two
students might have mastered complex sentences for they could get rid of getting “poor” in type four sentences. It was their lack of understanding on certain clause
which they frequently used that led them to get “poor.” Then, the rest six students obtained two or more “poor.” It could be said that these six students had not
mastered complex sentence constructions regardless of types.
B. Students’ problems in producing complex sentences
1. Students’ most frequent problems in all types of complex sentence
There were five ungrammaticalities which were very frequently found in all the four types of complex sentence. These were inconsistency of tenses, dangling
verbal, double finite verbs, subject verb agreement violation, and verb omission.
a. Inconsistency of tenses
There were many sentences that had inconsistent tenses. Referring to the past, retelling their interview results for instance, they used past form in main verb and
present form of finite verb in the dependent clause. Students used inappropriate tense for the context. In the following examples, there could be seen pairs of the
original sentences and the corrected ones. Remember that the corrections could be of many aspects, so take a look at the given topic only.
1 Original : Most of them state that the time was really short so they have to
find the article quickly.
Corrected : Most of them stated that the time was really short, so they have had
to find the article quickly.
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62 2 Original
: Students had to read the novel until they get the contents from the novel.
Corrected : Students had to read the novel until they get understood the contents from of the novel.
3 Original : The rest said that they like writing essay, because according to
them, writing essay can helped them to improve and develop their idea.
Corrected : The rest said that they liked writing essay because according to them, writing essay can could helped them to improve and develop
their idea
From the three examples above, it could be seen that some verbs supposed to be in past forms were written in present forms. In many cases, students did write a
finite verb or two in past forms, which was grammatically correct. They, however, wrote the other finite verbs in the same sentence in present forms, which made the
whole sentence grammatically incorrect. All of the three pairs of examples presented above confirmed this. As for the second example, “understood” was
used instead of “got” to replace “get” merely for the sake of meaning.
b. Dangling verbal
The verbal, infinitives, gerunds, and participles are verb forms used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs Wishon Burks, 1987. As they retain their nature as
verb, they may show action and have objects. Action requires an agent – someone or something to perform the act or to be responsible for it.
This was where the problems did lie. As the writer had observed in students’ writing, mostly, she found that this frequent problem was resulted from too long
sentences which contained two or more non-finite clauses. Here, due to the
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63 complexity of the sentence constructions, students made unclear reference of the
verbal to its agent. It made the whole idea of the sentences somehow confusing and unclear.
The examples could be observed below. 1 Original
: They said that by using pamphlet as one of their media it help them to make a sentence to tell the information from the pamphlet.
Corrected : They said that by using pamphlet as one of their media it helped them to make a sentence to tell giving the information from the
pamphlet. 2 Original
: Being the most used language in this world, the teachers of English are needed to be more creative to find a way of teaching
language to their students.
Corrected : With English being the most used language in this world, the teachers of English are needed to be more creative to find in their
a way of teaching language to their students.
From the two pairs of examples above, we could see that sentences containing dangling verbal were somehow difficult to understand due to the
sentences’ lack of clarity about the doers of certain action. In the first example, the phrase “
by using pamphlet as one of their media,” had an unclear doer due to the subject “it” that followed the phrase. Yet, seen from the intended meaning, it was found
out that it must be using the pamphlet that helped them to make a sentence. So, “by” and “it” must be omitted to make a gerund phrase functioning as the subject of the sentence.
To avoid dangling verbal, one common way is often implemented. That is to make the agent of a complex sentence the same. As in the second example, another possible
correction could be like this.
“Being Teaching students the most used language in this world, the teachers of English are needed to be more creative to find in their a way
of teaching language to their students.”
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64 This solution can be of a good assistance for students in writing such
sentences in isolation, like that in Structure class. This solution, however, may not work that well if implemented in writing contextually, like that in writing class. It
is caused by the possibility that certain idea or information may be better to be set forth in a clause than another.
When this must-be-emphasized information involves actions of an agent that is different from that of the other clause, should this information be sacrificed for
the sake of making similar agent? The correction of the second sentence can be another way out. We can see that instead of making the same agent, we can still
express two or even more actions even though each of them has different agent. It is what is called absolute construction. Frank 1972 says that an absolute
construction contains a “subject” that is unchanged from the form it has in a full sentence. In the predicate, he says, the finite verb is changed to a participle, or, if
the verb is be, it may be omitted at all. The absolute constructions, furthermore,
may occupy all three adverbial positions, initial, mid, and final position. It can
also be preceded by with as seen in the correction of the second example.
From the second example, we could see that in the dependent clause, the student who wrote the sentence wanted to emphasize the existence of English
rather than English teacher. If this student is given the latter correction, he may feel that something is missing even though his sentence is now correct. So, instead
of forcing such students to have the same agent in such sentences, sometimes we could give them another alternative for the sake of writing quality rather than
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65 merely correct structure. And so, absolute construction can be a way out, able to
help avoid dangling verbal and to preserve more important idea.
c. Double finite verbs
