Randall G . Nichols WORD PROCESSING AND BASIC WRITERS

When a word processing system became available to me, I began using it in my work, and I noticed that my papers and the ways I went about composing were changing, sometimes with pleasing results and sometimes not. Increased revising probably had made my final products better, but I was bothered that I didn't feel "finished" with many texts-I submitted them with the nagging feeling that more improvements could have been made. At the same time, I was teaching sections of basic writing at The Ohio State University, and some of the faculty were beginning a pilot project in which the writers would use a word processing system. I wondered, then, if the composing processes and products of the basic writers would be affected by use of such a system. The writers with whom I worked were the least skilled of the students coming in to Ohio State University for their freshman year. They were enrolled in the first of a two-course sequence into which they had been placed on the basis of two screenings. The first screening was their having scored 15 or below on the English section of the ACT. They were then required to write a placement essay which was read by teachers of basic writing. Based on this essay, the writers could have been placed in regular Freshman English or in either of the two "remedial" courses, neither of which counted for credit toward graduation but did count toward a grade point average. The students who placed in the first of the two courses had their writing problems not only in focus, organization, and development, but in surface-level features as well.