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Traditionally, most composition teachers have encouraged their students to create some form of pre-writing or outline before writing one word nonetheless, there are always students who can write a structured paper, spontaneously. Whether students make a traditional outline or write spontaneously, they will be organizing the ideas for the paper.
In trying to reduce the demand on working memory, it is often valuable to isolate this process of organizing ideas, as much as possible. Color-coding subtopics in a brainstorm, writing ideas onto sticky notes and then organizing those notes, even building models out of Legos™ or Tinker Toys™ — all have proven invaluable for students who were blocked at the point of organizing their ideas.
Outlining programs, such as Inspiration™ Software, enable students to manipulate visual shapes in order to organize ideas. The programs then turns that structure into a traditional linear outline. There are a number of other ways in which software can help organize ideas.
Using Technology to Write a First Draft
When writing a first draft, complete sentences must be formulated, which combine into coherent paragraphs and roughly follow the required rhetorical pattern — narrative, comparison, cause, and effect. Students must process information on a variety of levels: syntactic, semantic and even rhetorical.
For many students who have difficulties in basic mechanics, it is often invaluable to separate the act of writing from the act of editing. When issues such as spelling and punctuation are not automatic for a student, the quantity of information being processed simultaneously multiplies exponentially. By eliminating these concerns, including sentence structure, the students' energy and attention can be completely focused on the formulation of critical thought. Therefore, students are encouraged to actively avoid any impulse to edit during the writing process. They should do this with the understanding that they are generating ideas now, and they will edit the material at a later stage.
Technology can be extremely effective in assisting students to decrease the complexity of the act of writing.
Word Processing enables students to write freely with the confidence that they will be able to make changes at a later date easily and quickly.
Word Prediction suggests words that the student might be trying to type, by comparing the spelling to a set of common phrases. By assisting spelling, word prediction enables students to focus more on content. At times, the spelling suggestions may even trigger the students' ideas, offering a direction for the next paragraph.
Dictation (Text-to-Speech) entirely eliminates the act of spelling, as well as keyboarding or handwriting, allowing students to focus entirely on sentence structure, rhetoric, and critical analysis.
Using Technology To Edit One's Writing
For many students who learn differently, editing written work poses one of the greatest challenges they face. Traditionally, many students have relied on writing centers, friends, or even family members, to provide objective feedback on issues ranging from spelling to fluency. Drastic improvements in technology have dramatically increased the potential for independent editing, for a variety of students with difficulties.
Spell and Grammar Checkers show students exactly where mistakes are and often recommend editorial changes.
Text Readers let students hear what they have actually written on the page. Hearing the material allows students to recognize errors that go unidentified when they view the written version, due to their learning disabilities. Furthermore, hearing their writing read out loud usually inspires a great deal of editing for content, as well as fluency.
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