Exploring the Difficulties in Constructing Complex and Compound-Complex Sentences by Undergraduates in Pakistan

This study aimed to analyze the errors made by undergraduates in composing complex and compound-complex sentences with multiple subordinate clauses (noun clauses, adjective clauses and adverb clauses), and explored the grammatical and syntactical difficulties faced by students while constructing complex syntactical structures with proper use of co-coordinating, subordinating conjunctions and punctuation marks. This study also investigated to find out some practical strategies that could facilitate students to learn complex syntactical structure effectively. To achieve the objectives of this research mixed method was used. 50 students from one Pakistani university were randomly selected and asked to compose 5 complex sentences and 5 compound-complex sentences. Tests were marked by adapted iRubric. To find out the perception of students regarding difficulties in composing a proper complex syntactical structure Google Survey Form was used to collect responses from 113 students and finally some task-based activities were implied to control and reduce the errors in constructing complex and compound complex sentences. This study recommends some modern and task-based activities with strong drills and practices should be used to minimize errors in writing good sentences because GTM isn’t improving good grammatical writing skills in Pakistan.