post for 3/6

Before doing our readings for this week, I thought that online tutoring would be more time-consuming for the tutor and less effective for the student, but now that I've read about some of the possible benefits of the format, I'm eager to try more online tutoring! I hadn't thought about this idea of modeling the example in writing -- that getting feedback from a tutor in a full and written format from a tutor could be more helpful for the student. She would then have time to sit with the information, can re-read and Google things without the pressure of a tutor waiting for a response. This of course means that the tutor must be more careful in giving feedback -- and I like Remington's discussion of implicit and explicit modeling. The comments themselves can be examples of good writing for the student, so it's imperative to proof-read before sending. Remington highlights another benefit I hadn't considered: that the student does not have the fallback of backing up in conversation what she was trying to do in the paper. It is much more clear cut, then, whether the paper is working. While there is a drawback of the student not being able to communicate at the time about what she was intending with a problem sentence or paragraph, it does make the writing more accountable for itself.

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