Word Choice Errors in Chinese Students' English Writing and How Online Writing Center Tutors Respond to Them

Examining 200 word choice errors from Chinese students' drafts submitted to a writing center's online asynchronous tutoring program, the present study demonstrates that second language writers need help with word choice. Word choice problems, a natural part of second language learning, can negatively affect rhetorical effectiveness and readers' comprehension and evaluation. The study showed that 11% of online tutors' marginal comments related to word choice problems, among which 18% were due to translation. (Other error types were Wrong Context, Synform, Idiomaticity, Precision, and Register.) Direct corrections were the most common type of tutor comments 35%. (Other comment types were Explanation, Options, and Questions.) These numbers show that word choice errors are indeed critical, that even experienced writers rely on their first language, and tutors need more knowledge about word choice issues and how to provide instruction and feedback on them. The Writing Center Journal 34.2 | Spring/Summer 2015 International Writing Centers Association , Purdue University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Writing Center Journal www.jstor. org 1 Severino and Prim: Word Choice Errors in Chinese Students' English Writing and How O Published by Purdue e-Pubs, 2022 Introduction: Why Word Choice? According to composition research and writing center practice, the first step in improving one's writing is to use a recursive process of inventing, planning, drafting, revising, and editing while staying aware of one's purpose in relation to the needs of the audience (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Ryan & Zimmerelli, 2009). Yet for many second language writers,1 the writing process may be less effective, less recursive, and more laborious because their preoccupations with choosing the right words to fit their purpose and audience slow them down (Williams, 2005). Second language writers have themselves indicated that vocabulary or lack thereof is one of their primary concerns (Leki & Carson, 1994; Murphy & Roca de Larios, 2010), and vocabulary errors were the second most common problem among the errors noted in a study by Dana Ferris (2006). Problematic and erroneous word choices result in meaning distortion and therefore lack of comprehension and lower evaluations by readers (Engber, 1995). The quality of word choice can make a difference between an ineffective, less-than-comprehensible piece of writing and an effective, articulate one. But word choice errors, like all errors, are part of the natural process of second language learning (Rafoth, 2015). Also called lexical errors, word choice errors provide tutors and researchers with windows into what Larry Selinker (1972) has called the inter-language states of second language learning processes. Word choice errors can reveal how two languages express the same idea and therefore reveal the complexities of moving from the first to the second language to create meaning. That is why Xiao-Ming Yang & Huaxin Xu (2001) call word choice errors "errors of creativity. " Writing center professionals should be interested in knowing more about word choice issues for reasons that include word choice error frequency and the negative effects on readers; the importance of word choice in the language learning process; and the sometimes painful writing process that stems from writers' concerns with word choice. If, according to the CCCC Statement on Second Language Writers (2009), all writing teachers are also teachers of second language writing, and 1 Here we will use the term "second language writers" rather than ESL writers, English Language Learners, or Multilingual Writers because the 40 students in our sample had completed any ESL courses required of them. At the time of the study, they were writing for credit-bearing college courses across the curriculum and would identify themselves as second language writers more than English language learners or ESL. In addition, the field of second language writing, a foundation for our study, uses the term "second language writers. " 116 Severino & Prim | Word Choice Errors 2 Writing Center Journal, Vol. 34 [2022], Iss. 2, Art. 6 https://docs.lib. purdue.edu/wcj/vol34/iss2/6 DOI: 10.7771/2832-9414.1777 if, as Jessica Williams (2005) has claimed, all second language writing teachers are also teachers of second language, then it would follow that all writing center tutors are tutors not only of second language writing, but also of English as second language (Severino & Deifell, 2011; Rafoth, 2015). Word choice is also important because of the larger numbers of second language writers entering U.S. universities. These writers are changing the proportion of writing center work to include less focus on writing process and rhetorical issues and more focus on language, vocabulary, and grammar (Hall, 2013). Writing tutors increasingly have to explain rule-governed grammar errors (e.g., agreement problems such as he sleep or tense problems such as yesterday we go). Explaining such grammatical features is not particularly difficult; the rules are easily grasped by both tutors and students, and many resources and handbooks with examples are available for consultation. However, even when writers and tutors use multiple dictionaries, vocabulary errors can be more of a challenge for tutors to explain especially semantically-based errors of word choice. For example, there are subtle connotative differences between unkempt and sloppy or between neat and tidy; when to use consist of and when to use constitute; or the reason we say to make it a priority or to set priorities rather than to make priorities. The tendencies of second language writers to make word choice errors and the tutors' challenges in explaining them are exacerbated by the enormous vocabulary and number of near synonyms and soundand look-alike words in English (e.g., ambiguous /ambivalent, considerable /considerate, wake /weak, manor/ manner). Yet as Sarah Nakamaru (2010) has pointed out, writing center professionals often dichotomize written discourse into rhetoric vs. grammar, categories which map onto higher order vs. lower order concerns (Mc Andrew & Reigstad, 2001), thus ignoring or neglecting the middle discourse level of vocabulary. Nakamaru asserts that tutors need to know more about vocabulary issues and how to respond to them: "If tutors had more information about the ways lexical strengths and needs affect students' writing, and how to contend with these during sessions, they would feel more empowered to talk about lexical issues and would do so more effectively" (p. 109). Such tutor empowerment through knowledge about word choice errors is the goal of the present study. The first question that tutors may have is about the nature of word choice errors. What are their causes and sources? Which features of English cause problems? How much of a role does mental translation from the first language and culture play in causing these errors? To what The Writing Center Journal 34.2 | Spring/Summer 2015 117 3 Severino and Prim: Word Choice Errors in Chinese Students' English Writing and How O Published by Purdue e-Pubs, 2022 extent do higher proficiency second language writers still rely on their first language? Translation from the first language has been a topic of much research in second language writing ever since Billy Woodall (2002) noted in his composing-aloud language-switching study that second language writing differs from first language writing because the former involves two languages. Invariably, second language writers use their first languages in their second language writing processes both as a resource and a crutch. Sometimes the results of employing the first language to write in a second are positive because of a "match" between the words and ideas in the two languages. But when there is a first-language to second-language linguistic and possibly cultural mismatch, stemming from how different languages organize the world in different ways, errors and reader confusion can result (Yang & Xu, 2001; Woodall, 2002). So how do and how should tutors respond to the word choice errors they encounter? What are their most frequent responses to these types of errors and how are their responses influenced by their writing center education? Do most tutors follow the advice of Ferris (2006) and Susan Blau & John Hall (2002) to correct these vocabulary errors because they are often "untreatable"? That is, students would probably not be able to come up with a correction on their own because words and expressions are generally not patterned or rule-governed features like grammatical features. Instead, such words and expressions exemplify more of what is called "item learning" as opposed to "system learning" (Williams, 2005). Do tutors' responses to word choice errors promote both shortand long-term language learning, or should they be responding differently? And how can tutors help second language writers avoid making word choice errors in the first place? Investigating the answers to these kinds of questions will help both second language writers and their writing tutors. For this study we used an asynchronous online writing center database to identify the drafts of Chinese writers in order to investigate word choice errors and tutors' responses to them. We selected this data set because the largest group of international students at our university, like at many other U.S. universities (Porter & Belkin, 2013), are speakers of Chinese, and because every year more Chinese speakers use our asynchronous online tutoring program in addition to, or instead of, our face-to-face programs. Of our word choice data set, we asked the following questions: 1. How often in their marginal or in-text comments on students' drafts submitted to our online writing center do tutors respond 118 Severino & Prim | Word Choice Errors 4 Writing Center Journal, Vol. 34 [2022], Iss. 2, Art. 6