Peer-response remains a central process in first-year composition; faculty can make it effective and efficient by "spotlighting"--designing the process as digital, emergent, and distributive. In this article, the author first elaborates on his own use of peer-response terminology. He favors "peer-response" as the descriptive term for…

This article presents an exchange between Kip Strasma and Elizabeth Tomlinson. Strasma responds to "Gender and Peer Response" by Tomlinson, and Tomlinson responds to Strasma's ""Spotlighting": Peer-Response in Digitally Supported First-Year Writing Courses." Both of them respond to each other's cross talk.

This project/study introduced the use of computers in one freshman composition course to determine whether the instructor and the students could accomplish more in a computer-based rather than a traditionally structured course. The assumption was that students would produce better essays on the word-processor and printer, and that the instructor…

The recent influx of computer programs to aid students in writing has created some confusion between the linear, directed process of problem-solving and the less directed, more chaotic process of putting words down on paper. Though problem-solving and writing-as-process have some points in common, they cannot be taken as equivalent, because…

Examines similarities between composition and programming processes, and reviews two studies that linked instruction in computer programming and freshman composition to help students understand writing as a design discipline. Projects at the University of Montana and Bryn Mawr College which improved students' writing abilities are described. (LRW)

To learn more about the initial effects of word processing on essay-writing performance and on writing apprehension, eight English instructors at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, conducted a one-semester controlled experiment with freshmen in eight randomly selected college writing classes. Eighty students wrote essays using terminals…

Discusses revision as a growth-through-change process occurring continuously through all stages of drafting. Describes several ways in which word processing facilitates invention, substitution, reordering, adding, cutting and other aspects of this kind of composing. Offers guidelines for using computers in the writing classroom. (JG)

This paper suggests that composition instructors must prepare their students for the ways in which the Information Superhighway affects professional and academic communication. Students must now be proficient in techniques of composing such as hypertext and the recursive writing process to perform various writing and research tasks as a…

Describes a teaching strategy using Apple IIe computers in a sequence of individual conferences. Includes asking questions while scrolling through the paper, showing students how to elaborate ideas by entering suggested changes and prompts in capital letters during the conference, and using a spelling checker to prompt revision (e.g., by compiling…

A protocol study investigated whether computer tutors (programs that interactively guide writers while they freewrite with a word processing program) promote or hinder a richer understanding of the composing process. The analysis focused on writers' attitudes toward computer tutors in the invention process. Data were collected by tape recording a…

Writers who compose on computers have often complained of the difficulty they have in evaluating and correcting their work on the screen, particularly if the changes necessary are large, structural ones. A study of six freshman composition students and five writers experienced with computer writing examined how each used hard copy printouts of…

Describes study that examined the effect of the use of microcomputers as word processors in a college freshman English composition course. Treatments for the experimental and control groups are described, dependent and independent variables are explained, and results based on pretest and posttest writing samples are analyzed. (21 references) (LRW)

A case study examined the writing problems of Jay, a freshman composition student at the University of Massachusetts, to determine how teachers should handle students whose composing styles are not suited to writing with word processors. Interviews, classroom observation, and careful analyses of Jay's essays in progress and logsheets were…

Intended to provide language arts teachers with practical ideas to help students become better writers, this focused journal issue addresses writing instruction at all levels, from elementary school through college. The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "Intuitive Writing" (J. Hise); (2) "Tutoring the…