\title{Report on European Writing and Computers Conference}
\author{Allan Reese}

\begin{Article}

  \noindent The European Conference on Writing and Computers held in
  Utrecht in October attracted more than one hundred and fifty
  assorted academics, predominantly psychologists and educationalists.
  This conference was formed by combining two events: the biennial
  meeting of the Special Interest Group on Writing of the European
  Association on Learning and Instruction (EARLI SIG), and the annual
  meeting of the European Conference on Computers and Writing (ECW). A
  third `event' took place in parallel, an on-line conference hosted
  on a computer in the United States.

  On top of these various groups and starting points, the conference
  was organized within twelve conference themes (`What is Writing?',
  `Writing as a learning tool', `Effective Instruction', etc.) and
  with a variety of formats; there were more than a hundred papers,
  posters, workshops and demonstrations. Participation was like using
  hypertext; unless you stuck to one theme it was a matter of browsing
  round, following up leads and trying not to regret the parts you
  missed. The organizers distributed a bound set of abstacts some
  weeks before the conference. This was a great aid in planning and is
  the main record of the conference, as no direct `Proceedings' are
  planned. Delegates were instead asked to contribute chapters for
  three books on themes relevant to the conference. These books are
  planned for publication in 1995.

The emphasis through the seven ECW conferences has shifted from
computers and software, to writing and the writing process. In now
linking with a SIG representing mainly academic research, the writing
itself ceased to be a focus of interest. Few of these researchers
considered writing as a product to be \emph{read}; text and writers are
\emph{data}. There were studies of: how children form sentences; the
types of grammatical errors made by students learning a second
language, or learning \emph{in} a second language; linguistic forms
used in academic papers and how these offer cues to a social subtext;
comparisons of language used in formal and informal writing. No one
attended the conference as an `author'; everyone was an observer. The
poor quality of presentation in many posters was striking --- people
talking about effective communication themselves ignoring all the
necessities of the medium. As usual speakers abused the overhead
projector with illegible or unintelligible foils.

The positive side was that within the anarchic and fulsome atmosphere
of pure research there were so many opportunities to seek out
exhibitors and discuss ideas. Compared to a typically British
timetabled and regimented sequence of papers leaving few minutes for
questions before proceeding, most of our time was spent in parallel
poster sessions where you could spend an hour on twenty topics or just
one. One person had been deputed as a `discussant' on each theme and  
in the final sessions led a discussion, which helped in shaping
all one's impressions into a coherent whole. Necessarily, these 
discussions did not lead to consensus or firm conclusions!

I looked particularly at tools to assist writers. The presentations
caused me to wonder whether there is a strong divide between software for
training writers, and that used in the production process. Adult
and professional writers now have well-known products such as MS~Word
and WordPerfect that subsume aids like spell-checkers and thesauruses.
The research products on display were not in that league and had been
developed in very constrained and particular circumstances: a program
to encourage story writing in early teens; a program to guide
engineering undergraduates in planning technical reports; programs to
teach journalistic style. One contemporary strand (all round the
world) is the observation that traditional writing instruction based
round constructive feedback and revision is time-consuming and
expensive; everyone would like a computer-based alternative that is
cheaper and more readily available. The irony is that the software
displayed would sink without trace without considerable support from 
the teaching researchers.

The research shows little sign that computer-aided instruction (CAI)
would be superior or faster. CAI may be appropriate in well-structured
situations, areas where one might consider using SGML to ensure
completeness and adherence to required formats. But can it be used to
encourage reflective and original writing? The researchers didn't talk
about the software they used for their own writing --- again, this
odd, clinical decoupling between objective and subjective observation
--- and the only time I discussed \LaTeX{} was with a UK delegate who
had had a book mangled by a publisher. Many of the craft skills
mentioned --- for example, teaching undergraduates to write a table of
contents to assist in planning their report --- are well-supported in
the \LaTeX{} philosophy; I felt that the psychologists should break
out of their research clique and look at pragmatic rather than
conceptual solutions.

The keynote address widened the field to include pedagogical applications
of general-purpose software. We can encourage students to use commodity
software in all subject areas; this is one aspect of information
technology as an enabling rather than prescriptive tool. Students of
literature, for example, might build a database of ideas and images in
poems, and through this discover trends or associations. David Jonassen
(Penn State Univ) linked this to the constructivist view of education ---
don't just `teach facts' but train students \emph{how} to make their own
sense of the world by individually using `cognitive tools'. The teacher
operates as facilitator and mentor, not an authority. It was a stimulating
talk and the skills described would assist able students in pre-writing
organization of material. 

As a writer and teacher of writing, I took comfort that the conference
confirmed there is still no magic shortcut to learning the craft. How
do you get to be a writer? Several contributions addressed points
relating to providing feedback from teacher to student. They discussed
the barriers to communication, the social context, psychological and
cultural factors. The teacher-pupil relationship is mirrored in
professional spheres, such as employer-staff and editor-contributor.
It was very interesting, but would relate equally to teaching in any
subject. Is the teacher being constructive, or expressing power?
Good writers say they are writing for themselves, but it is a gift or
a skill to use yourself as a critical audience.

My highlight was Jack Selzer's (also Penn State Univ) paper
\emph{Scientific and technical writing in a post-modern era.} What does
post-modern mean? It's a jargon term for texts that challenge and
break the conventions of `modern science'. ``Where conventional
writing is sober and restrained, post-modern ones are playful,
extravagant, exuberant.\ldots Where conventional scientific writing
prizes consensus and agreement, these unconventional ones call for
pluralism and voice conflict.\ldots [They are] unpredictable and
exploratory.'' Too much writing nowadays is formulaic and
conventional, in form and content, to the point of parody. Rules is
rules, but writers must understand the rules and not apply them
blindly. If students are not to confuse computer writing with
computerized writing, these are the texts they should study. Take a
random example: \textit{The \TeX book}.


\subsection{Postscript}

I use Correct Grammar (CG) as an aid in proof-reading and polishing. It
measures the above text as `fairly difficult', with a US reading level of
14th grade. It found seven passive sentences, of which I changed one and
clarified the meaning. It found one real spelling mistake (I'd written
``fullsome''.) and suggested ``post-modern'' should be hyphenated, though
Selzer had not. CG objected to the noun and verb discordance in ``Rules is
rules''. It found eleven sentences longer than thirty one words, its
default for academic writing (I could change that). In this piece I left
them all. It suggested one `run-on sentence'; this sentence had worried
me, but I left it --- can you spot it? CG suggested ``in general'' was a
weak phrase, and I took it out. It picked up several strings of
prepositions, but I thought they were clear and necessary so overruled it.
CG missed a phrase that read ``like\ldots\ like\ldots'' but I decided the
first time was identifying examples while the second did indicate
similarity so made a slight change. 

Correct Grammar is a useful adjunct to straight re-reading your text.
It's reasonably cheap. One irritation is that it is not \TeX-aware.
I've suggested several times that the \TeX{} community lobby for this
to be added. As \emph{thinking} writers, we are probably the intended
market for such a product.

\end{Article}