Smart Houses
Schenker’s article “Smart House”, in Speak up 169, states that in the future, due technology, networked houses will make people’s life easy and comfortable. The electronic devices will be connected to internet and will have special chips to control activities like housework, communications, shopping, bills or people’s social life. The disadvantages of having a networked home are not significant. People will have to pay some extra dollars for extra chips, the internet connection and the security measures to protect the system against cyber pirating. People will not pay for maintenance since the services will repair themselves. She concludes that money people can spend will not mean much considering all the benefits of smart houses. (114 words)
The Influence of Teacher Commentary on Student Revision
This study inspect over 1,600 marginal and end comments written on 110 first drafts of essays by 47 university ESL advanced students, considering pragmatic goals and the linguistic features of each comment. Then, drafts of each essay were examined to observe the influence of the first draft commentary on the students’ revisions and assess whether the made changes regarding the teacher’s feedback actually improved the essays. Many of the comments led to substantive student revision, and there were types of commentary that were more helpful than others. The final results suggest several important implications for L2 writing instruction and for future studies on a vital but neglected topic. (108 words)
