Teaching Writing with Computer Aids

Abstract

For teachers concerned with improving student writing, there have been two extremes in instructional strategy. Teachers who give ad hoc advice or who run their classes like writing workshops can individualize instruction and treat papers as unified wholes, but they repeat themselves often. (Or they can refer students to handbooks with a set of cryptic marking symbols-dev, agr, / /which students rarely decipher and check.) The second extreme involves class use of a textbook according to a fixed syllabus. This practice usually follows a developmental or chronological progression-from words to sentences to paragraphs to essays; or from prewriting to writing to editing. Yet recent empirical studies of writing show that composition is not a series of discrete, chronologically ordered tasks, but rather a complex of recursive, embedded activities (Linda Flower and John R. Hayes, A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing, CCC, 32 [1981], 365-387). The systematized order of a textbook, then, may not meet the needs of any particular student. However, now teachers can use computer programs and word processing to combine the systematic coverage of a writing class with the individualization of a writing workshop. This paper reports on the educational philosophy and practice I have been developing to incorporate computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and word processing in a freshman English class. Students use Apple microcomputers with the word-processing program APPLEWRITER II along with other programs for CAI and text-feedback. However, the ideas for integrating computer aids into the composition class can be adapted for use with other systems (or have alternate forms, as noted in the references). Word processing can change the way students write and their attitudes toward writing. In fact, the protean malleability of text with word processing is ideally suited for tutoring students in writing improvement.' Writing is not like arithmetic with discrete, masterable component units. It is more like producing a sym-