Summary and Reflection: Word Choice Errors in Chinese Students English

Writing and How Online Writing Center Tutors Respond to Them

Author(s): Carol Severino and Shih-Ni Prim
Source: The Writing Center Journal, Vol.34, No.2 (Spring/Summer 2015), pp. 115-143

This article focuses on how online writing center tutors respond to word choice errors
in Chinese students English writing. Although there are some differences between
these two tutoring sessions, the cases described in this article still have meaningful
implications for our tutoring work.

The recursive process of writing is always considered as an effective practice for

improving ones writing, however, this is not always true for second language writers,
who are always struggling for choosing the right word for a specific context with
appropriate meanings. Writing center professionals often dichotomize written discourse
into categories of rhetoric and grammar, ignoring or neglecting the vocabulary.
Problematic and erroneous word choices were the second most common problem
(Ferris, D.R., 2006), which will definitely influence the meaning expression of the
writers and also the comprehension and evaluation of the reader. The author points out
that second language writing which involves two languages significantly differs from
first language writing. Tutors empowerment through knowledge about word choice
errors is the goal of the present study.

The authors obtained a sample of the word choice errors of the Chinese writers who
submitted their English drafts to the online writing center service, examined and
discussed each of the tutors marginal comments, from which we identified and
classified word choice errors that are semantically-based or content-based rather than
form-based lexical errors. The final sample consists of 200-word choice errors in 40
drafts written by 40 different Chinese students representing 20 fields. The errors were
classified into these categories: translation from Chinese (18%), wrong context (37%),
synform (14%), idiomaticity (12%), precision (13%) and register (6%). Tutor responses
are classified into five categories: correction (48%), question (25%), option (10%),
explanation (12%), and error indication (5%). Errors and responses are seriously
analyzed.

As Lynn Goldstein (2004) argues, formulating written commentary that is helpful for
revision and learning is a complex process with multiple interacting variables. We all
know that correction only is not sufficient and enough for the writers improvement
especially for the untreatable lexical problems which are discrete items not organized
systems. Clear explanation is necessarily needed. However, due the asynchronous
characteristic of the online tutoring, copious and long explanation will make the writers
exhausted with the writing. Face-to-face tutoring session has advantage when dealing
this the explanation. Clear and brief explanations with corrections will facilitate this
writing process more effectively. We are there not editors for correcting their errors on
discourse level of the rhetoric, grammar and vocabulary. We need to explain, question
and give options. Even though there are some limitation of their study, this article still
inspires and encourages me a lot with the concern on lexical accuracy and proficiency.