Errors and Expectations: Chapter 6

Vocabulary

Something that basic writers struggle with that didn’t occur to me until I started interviewing my coworkers about what they do with grammar in their courses is vocabulary. Karen Busch, who is one of the senior members of my English department, spent last year in Iceland for her sabbatical, where she taught a variety of classes and age groups. First off, she noticed that grammar was NOT an issue for these students, but she did notice that they worked consistently on learning more and more words to improve their proficiency in English. This got her thinking: if vocabulary to the writer is akin to paint for a painter, it’s pretty important and worth spending some time on. Maybe our native English speakers could also improve on their vocabulary? She came back to the States with an activity she uses, but more on that later.

Chapter 6 in Errors and Expectations speaks to the issue of vocabulary. Vocabulary presents specific challenges for the basic writer because the type of writing that’s done in academia is one for an audience, an audience who carefully considers what is being written and looks at that writing based on a long line of expectations that come from Standard English (187-8). It’s a difficult task: students might have a lot to learn in order to broaden their vocabularies, and that means not just learning the words but also how to use them appropriately (188).

Sometimes the errors basic writers have are blatant ("floormats" versus "formats"), but other times, the word the basic writer uses is actually pretty close to the right word, but it’s not quite right; for example: "Many students portray immature concepts." It can be difficult to explain why these words are incorrect (191-2). There’s also the issue of complicated versus simple writing styles; basic writers often think that the more complicated the writing (using thesaurus words, for example, that they’ve never used before to sound "smart"), the better it is (194-6).

Shaughnessy notes three specific characteristics of the vocabulary of basic writers: "…a preponderance of vague nouns and ambiguous pronouns, a dependence on basic verbs, and an absence of modification" (199). Another word that is used a great deal by basic writers is one that one of my other colleagues notes as a personal pet peeve: "…the favorite word is thing, the all-purpose noun that parallels the all-purpose that of syntax or the all-purpose comma of punctuation" (199). Finally, basic writers lack the vocabulary to be precise, so their ideas are "important" or "interesting" (201-2). I confess that using these words is something I too am guilty of!

Suggestions for improving vocabulary:

1. Learn about words: For example, learning prefixes and suffixes and how they can change words increases knowledge about how words work (212).

2. Learn words: Words can be best learned in context, not just in the developmental writing course, but throughout their college careers (217).

3. Learn a sensitivity to words: Basic writers need to learn how to choose the right words for their purposes. Substitution practice, looking at sample first drafts (that can often have "messy" notes on them), and reading are strategies that might help students become more sensitive to word choices (222). Having students look at a piece of writing from a famous author and then asking them to look at the writing through the lens of the writer—essentially, to get into the mind of the writer, to imagine what she might have been thinking as she was making word choices—can help students be more sensitive to these choices (223).

Shaughnessy points to various issues I’ve seen in my students’ writing, and it appears that vocabulary is another concept that I should consider spending some more time on in my own classes. How to do this, though, when time feels constrained already? I need an exercise that I can do to get the students thinking about their vocabularies and using new words that also isn’t going to be long and complicated. Back to Karen, who has a great exercise she uses in her classes.

Karen uses a website (http://www.academicvocabularyexercises.com) that focuses on academic vocabulary and has a variety of exercises. The 300 words listed on the website are those that are agreed on as the "academic language" words that ESL students should know. The words on the list are frequently those that native English speaking students have heard and may know the meaning of (such as "significant"), but they don’t use them on a regular basis. Karen has students pick 5 words from each sublist (3 sublists at a time), define them and write a sentence using them. Then, students pick out five words and use them to create a dialogue between people in specific roles (like bartender and drunk, teacher and student, or doctor and patient). The results are often funny, and students become more comfortable with the words when using them in an everyday situation.

I love this activity because it asks students to use words in several different ways, gets their creativity going, has them create writing, AND it’s manageable time-wise. I’m going to try this in my Fundamentals of Writing II classes.