The Use Of Computers For Esl Writing Instruction
Using computers in ESL writing tests
Ruud Wierenga
January 2009
Contents
1. Introduction……………………………………………………….3
2. Article 1……………………………………………………………3
3. Article 2……………………………………………………………6
4. Comparison of article 1 and article 2 ……………………………...8
5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………8
6. Implications………………………………………………………..9
7. Suggestions………………………………………………………..9
1. Introduction
In the Netherlands more and more schools are changing to an “Electronische Leer Omgeving” (ELO or Electronic Learning Environment). I too work at a school where, in a few years, most of the physical books will be replaced by a digital version, or at least, some form of digital instruction. As one of the most time consuming aspects of being a language teacher is the reading, checking, correcting and giving feedback on written text it would be an relief to be able to cut down on the time spent on these matters and to be able to spend more time on other aspects of writing instruction. Pupils nowadays are very familiar with computers, their handwriting is getting harder to read every year which has raised my interest in methods to incorporate the ELO and the computer-based writing programs. During my search for useful, scientific, information I have read a lot of articles on the subject or related matters. In this paper I am going to restrict myself to two of these articles which I think are best suited to compare with each other and which might be useful for other people to base their decision on whether or not to purchase such a program and use computers in their writing classes.
2. Article 1
The first article I will summarize is an article by Chi-Fen Emily Chen and Wei-Yuan Cheng. The title of the article is: “The use of a Computer-based Writing Program: Facilitation or Frustration”.
This article describes research that has been done among third year students at a Taiwanese university. They use the program MyAccess© to...
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