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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 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.