The effectiveness of lexicographic tools for optimising written L1-texts

We present an empirical study addressing the question if and to which extent lexicographic writing aids improve text revision results. German university students were asked to optimise two German texts using (1) no aids at all, (2) highlighted problems or (3) highlighted problems accompanied by lexicographic resources that could be used to solve the specific problems. We find that participants from the third group improve the most problems and introduced the fewest semantic distortions during revision. Also, they reached the highest overall score and are most efficient (as measured in points per time). The second group with highlighted problems lies between the two other groups in almost every measure we analyse. We discuss these findings in the scope of intelligent writing environments, the effectiveness of writing aids in practical usage situations and teaching dictionary skills