Eight English instructors at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, conducted a one-semester controlled experiment with freshman in eight randomly selected classes of
College Writing
to learn about the initial effects of word processing on essay-writing performance and on writing apprehension. Four classes wrote essays using terminals linked to a mainframe computer (Experimental Group), and four classes wrote essays in the traditional mode using pens, pencils or typewriters (Control Group). The eight instructors agreed upon a common syllabus and common teaching approaches for the freshman writing course. To measure writing performance, they devised an analytic scale. To measure writing apprehension, they used a writing apprehension test developed by Daly and Miller. The Experimental Group showed greater progress than the Control Group from the pre to post Essay Test but could not demonstrate superior performance on the six required essays of the course. For writing apprehension, there was no significant difference between the two groups.
Marilyn Poris (Ph.D., Research Methodology, Hofstra University) is currently serving as Director of Institutional Research a Marist College, where she also teaches courses in statistics.
Key Words composition - word processing - computers - writing anxiety - writing quality
Milton Teichman (Ph.D., English, University of Chicago) is professor of English at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York. He has directed writing programs in freshman writing and has supervised research in the field of technology and writing. He has written on innovative approaches to the teaching of writing, as well as on a range of literary subjects from the poetry of Wordsworth to the literature of the Holocaust.