Writing with an online concordance has its advantages in terms of ready resources for students to rely on. It can be a time-saving device, and once 'hooked' on the system and the real-time answers to vocabulary or grammar questions, I can see how students would not mind writing in this manner. BUT the online sessions should be timed periodically throughout a semester for both the students' and instructors' sakes. Having the actual documents posted on one site for the instructor eliminates the awkwardness of e-mailing documents, which I cannot tolerate myself, when faced with exorbitant amounts of students. The drawback is the learning curve for familiarizing oneself with the technology.
Luxtutor is amazingly academic, however, which is its strength. It's a maze of resources, best used for the advanced, or EAP writers. Just becoming familiar and even expert at navigating the concordance would be useful in the students' future academic writing. I'm smitten with this feature: concordance of both written and spoken language! The bonus for me, also a French instructor, is that Luxtutor has both English and French concordances. BINGO!
Yes, emailing documents can be awkward and, more importantly, unreliable. Email can be lost, sent to spam, or delayed. And receiving lots of student emails with large attachments can tax academic mail accounts that have limits on storage capacity.
ReplyDeleteLisa,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that a portion of time would need to be spent demonstrating to students how to use this online concordance, as well as initially familiarizing oneself as the teacher with the website. What do you think of the layout of this website? Personally, at least on my first attempt at using it, I feel it is a bit overwhelming and disorganized in how it presents information. Perhaps I myself just need to get more familiar with this technology!
Kristin,
ReplyDeleteI agree. It is a bit dizzying to navigate. That's why time to get acclimated is essential for many of the CALL sites.