3/27

The question I had reading both articles this week was, how does this differ from online tutoring of native speakers? In the case of Fei, I thought that perhaps native speakers who request grammar help are likely to have texts that are less error-dense, which would affect the overall percentage of grammar comments. But I think Fei's writing process is not dissimilar from a native speaker college student, and her ability and desire to take on suggestions is probably similar to the average native speaker. To what extent do online tutoring students respond to global feedback, or suggestions about rhetoric? I mean, I don't know--but I think they mostly want to do the easy fixes, the quick editing, and not the intensive revisions. I'm guessing that the graphs on 170-171 likely reflect how native speakers respond to feedback, too, although they'd have different quantities of each type of comment, and perhaps syntax would be less of a concern.

I thought it was funny reading through the description of the comment types, because I try to do several in many of my comments. Here's a particularly lengthy example from an online paper I tutored recently:
In response to, "Therefore, “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” refuted the cultural imperialism thesis as it was a Colombian show, which spread across the globe and became very popular worldwide based on the high number of views and ratings the show brought in, the genre of humor that was universally popular, and the audiences interaction through fan pages on social media."

I wrote: Your introduction does a great job of introducing Ugly Betty as a show, and as an example of a telenovela that is popular worldwide. For me as a reader, the piece about the cultural imperialism thesis seems to be coming from nowhere. What is the cultural imperialism thesis? What aspects does it include? Is there anything about Ugly Betty that conforms to the theory? How does Ugly Betty refute it? For example, you could have a sentence like “A prominent theory in contemporary communications is the cultural imperialism theory, which means a, b, and c.” Then, your thesis can be a direct response to each of those aspects. If you’re performing a certain kind of analysis, you can also say something like “In this essay, I will be analyzing Yo Soy Betty La Fea through the lens of… in order to show that…” Your professor outlines three topics for you to cover, so you could even say something like “First, I will perform an industrial analysis, then textual analysis, and finally (third item from prompt).” If you more explicitly outline your essay this way, it can help you stay focused and relate your ideas back to the thesis!

Here, I'm identifying an error, providing an explanation, asking several questions, and making several suggestions. But what are the odds the student made it all the way through that comment and made global organizational changes based on my suggestion? In retrospect, I wish I had made it two separate comments--one on constructing a thesis, and one on providing an outline of the organization of the essay--and I wish I'd made more of an effort to be concise.

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