Focusing on the Comprehension Difficulty of Active and DifferentTypes of Passive Sentences for Intermediate EFL Learners: AComparative Study

Much of research on comprehension of passive sentences targets healthy adults, children acquiring their first language and people with aphasia. However, a topic that lacks evidence is comprehension challenges learners of foreign languages face in perceiving different types of passive structures. This study has compared the comprehension difficulty of active and different types of passives by Iranian EFL learners. The participants’ task was to read a sentence (either active or passive) and choose a corresponding item in a multiple-choice test. The answers were analyzed in terms of elapsed time and success rates. The participants needed less time comprehending active sentences and had a higher success rate in comparison with the passive counterparts. The results also suggested that different passive verb types (i.e., regular, irregular, action, state, double-objects, negatives, and questions) imposed different degrees of comprehension challenge for EFL learners; passives with regular verbs were the least challenging subsequently, irregular verbs and action verbs, then questions and negative passives followed by the passives with the state verbs and finally passives with double-object verbs were the most demanding passive structures. This may be of insight for EFL instructors and material developers to possibly invest more time for the more challenging passive structures.