Notes that online writing environments can lead basic writers to focus on the instrumental nature of language and technology, construe writing as performance, and see revision as error correction. Explores computer use as an aid in the process of composition in a one-credit computer lab course. Finds that basic writers face significant…

Presents findings from an ethnographic study of four high school basic writers collaborating on an assignment in their school's computer lab. Finds that the students were largely unsuccessful as writers and as collaborators--three of the students became, for the most part, nonwriters. Suggests that computer-assisted writing environments may result…