OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO WRITING: COMPUTER SUPPORT FOR BASIC WRITING SKILLS

Abstract

Students who find writing challenging often struggle with the basic transcription processes involved in writing, including handwriting or typing, spelling , capitalization, and punctuation. Problems with transcription are important both because they affect written products and because they interfere with students' ability to attend to higher order processes such as planning and evaluation. Computer tools, including word processing, spelling checkers, speech synthesis, word prediction, and speech recognition software, offer support to writers, but they also have limitations. In this article, the benefits and limitations of these tools are analyzed and the available research on their use is discussed.