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To keep our readers apprised of new software with potential to help writers, we will reproduce announcements of new products. We do not endorse any of these products. We encourage any subscribers who purchase the software to review the packages for us and submit reviews to Computers and Composition.
THE GRADER and THE READER from Bill Marling:
My English composition software is now available for the IBM Personal Computer. THE GRADER allows teachers to grade student disk files, to maintain a gradebook, and to track 14 types of errors - a complete grading system. THE READER is a grammar book on disk, with which students read their graded essays and make corrections. These are the same programs that I wrote originally for the DEC VT180 microcomputer and used to conduct successful "paperless" composition classes at Case Western Reserve University in 1982-83. Perhaps you heard me talk about this experiment at the CCCC, MLA, or DECUS conventions. The IBM-PC version has some extra features, such as "word wrap" in the right margin comment field, grade strings of five characters (for A-/B+ grades and such) and reverse cursor motion.
The software requires an IBM-PC with 2 single or double-sided drives, 64K RAM and ANY monitor. And IBM-Epson-Okidata printer helps, but isn't essential. Any text editor that can produce a standard ASCII text file will do (Wordstar, Vedit, etc.).
The programs are "polished prototypes." They are 99% debugged; the remaining bugs are documented and easily avoided. Each program, with disk, function key overlay and documentation (on paper and on disk) is $10. This covers the cost of materials and postage; the programming is basically free. If you order, I ask that you fill in an error report and evaluation form so that I can design a better version 2.0.
TORRICELLI AUTHOR ($295, CP/M only), TORRICELLI STUDIO (free with Torricelli Author, $30 separately), TORRICELLI SCHOOL ($150 for CP/M and MS-DOS) and TORRICELLI EDITOR ($295 for CP/M and MS-DOS).
These programs allow the user to write any interactive course without any knowledge of programming. Thus, it would be possible to have a student sit down at a microcomputer and go through a tutorial and exercise for any course. The programs include features that allow for testing with or without answers and explanations. They require 48K of RAM and will run under the operating systems noted above. The programs are available to educators at a 20% discount if the buyer agrees to write a course for The Answer in Computers to market. However, the course has to be delivered within 90 days of receipt of the program. 20% royalties are paid. (submitted by R. Schlobin)
The WRITEWELL Series by Deborah Holdstein:
A series of programs (projected number--15 tutorials and text-entry programs) that helps writers brush up on punctuation, sentencing, word choice, etc., with other programs in invention, composing, paragraphing, etc. The tutorials are instructional and interactive; the composing/ text-entry programs give the student guided help in composing, choosing and formulating topic sentences, revising, and so on.
Machines: All written in BASIC. Run on Apple 2+ and 2e. Will be adapted to other machines/languages.
Availability: Forthcoming from Conduit/Harper and Row; six tutorial programs are complete; programs in composing, paragraphing, invention, etc., in preparation. Contact:
or
SEEN : A Computer Program for Character Analysis in Literature by Helen Schawrtz
SEEN is an interactive, non-judging computer program which helps students create and test their options about literary characters. SEEN is designed to help students see more in what they have read or observed by using a tutorial and then communicating with other students (on a computer Network) about the ideas each has developed in the tutorial. The program also keeps records--1) allowing the teacher to monitor student activities and 2) providing students with printouts of their work for use as study guides or as pre-writing notes.
SEEN runs on an Apple II Plus with DOS 3.3 and 48R.
With SEEN, a tutorial first prompts students to state their opinion about a literary character and then look more carefully at the literary work for different kinds of evidence. The basic hypothesis takes the form "my opinion about literary character X in literary work Y is Z," with the student supplying the particular examples (like "Juliet" in "Romeo and Juliet" is "sincere in love"). The program then uses this information and questions asking for supporting evidence: What does Juliet DO that shows she is sincere in love? What does she SAY that shows this? How do others' reactions to Juliet support the hypothesis? How does a comparison to others in a similar situation show Juliet's sincerity in love? If there is a third person narrator, what does he say that supports the thesis? Students are then encouraged to test their views by coming up with and considering contradictions or exceptions to the hypothesis. Finally, questions ask how the character has changed in the course of the work and how the student summarizes his or her view of the character. The tutorial answers are then posted as a "notice," signed with the user's pen-name, on a computer Network programmed as part of SEEN . (NOTE: In the tutorial, the program does not and cannot evaluate
responses; that is a job for the audience using the Network.)
On this Network students communicate with each other using the computer's capacity as a trusty "bulletin board" for getting and sending comments. Each notice and comment is automatically signed with the writer's pen-name and posted on the Network. This peer feedback shows students that others have different perceptions and that writers should support their argument. Student users can work unpressured, at their own convenience and protected by the use of pen-names. Finally, each student winds up with notes on a computer disk in a form he or she can print out OR load into most word-processing programs that Applesoft or BASIC textfiles (like Applewriter). She or he can then start on a paper without the "blank page" syndrome blocking creativity.
Students using the program can concentrate on their ideas while almost effortlessly internalizing the questions, thus learning what is considered evidence. Users have commented that they read differently, with greater attention to detail, after using SEEN .
Teachers can easily work with students and their printouts to define a paper topic based on the individual student's interests (and cutting the conference time necessary to do so). Teachers can also monitor the nature and quantity of each student's work by checking records of student use.
For information, write:
WORD CHOICE: An advanced guide to selecting a CP/M word processor and a microcomputer for home, university, and business by Dr. Roger Schlobin
OK--you, your business, or your school or university has decided to buy one or more microcomputers with word processing. This little book has been designed to begin where more general studies of word processing and to offer some hardheaded advice about what is worthwhile and what makes one program different from another. It contains extensive sections on buying guidelines, word processors, spelling checkers, thesauri, support programs, utilities, CP/M enhancements, networking, training and pedagogical programs, typesetting, games, computers, and printers. WORD CHOICE began last year in a very modest way as a handout for a talk at the Fourth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. After 150 copies disappeared then and after sending out the remaining 100 in answer to mail requests since then, the author began to think that people weren't just being kind with their requests and thank yous. Thus, his little project, which began as a way to get his own words out of the house faster, has swelled into this booklet.
All the choices, comments, and suggestions here are the results of the author's hands-on successes and, oh yes, failures. If the author hasn't seen something, you'll know it. If something hasn't worked or seems excessively difficult, you'll know it. If there's a good, but little-known program out there, you'll know. Every effort has been made to be dependable. However, little attempt has been made to make this cute or deceptively simple. The assumption here is that you have done some reading or at least made inquiries. You may even be on the verge of a final decision. Now you need to know what works with what, and why in Heaven's name someone keeps insisting that MAGIC ERASER is better than the AUTOMATIC BALLPOINT you'd picked out. WORD CHOICE should help you make that final, expensive decision, one that should give you long years of fruitful marriage with the right software and hardware for your needs.
Make checks payable to Quest Publications. WORD CHOICE is $4.95 plus 50 cents postage and handling.
WRITER: A text processing and analysis program for composition students
WRITER is designed to help freshman composition students at Ohio Wesleyan improve their writing by teaching them how to use computerized text processing.
WRITER is self-contained and completely documented. Student users are given a forty-page instructional manual which explains how they can use WRITER to improve their prose. The manual includes "finger exercises" that help students locate typical errors. Other exercises and suggestions are intended to give student writers some insight into their writing style. This emphasis underscores another major feature of WRITER: it derives from a coherent view of the composition process which regards revision as an integral part of rhetorical invention in other words, students are encouraged to discover what they want to say about a topic by moving from draft to draft.
WRITER is divided into three major sections. The first allows a student to insert and edit using EDIT, the major text editor running on the OWU computing system. WRITER includes on-line instructions on using EDIT which the novice user can review at his own pace.
The second major section checks a text file for various errors--at present mainly homonym errors--and for sentence features. Two such programs, WORDS and COORD, help students learn about their sentence structure by displaying a graph listing sentences by word length and by counting the number of coordinators and subordinators in papers. The assumption behind these two programs is that sentence complexity is, in part at least, a function of sentence length. Thus by showing students how long their sentences are, we encourage them to experiment with combining or modification strategies.
Programs like these constitute the heart of the WRITER program, which tries to emphasize the writing process rather than mere error correction.
The third section prints the paper. WRITER asks the student for a title and then formats the paper. The student does not have to know very much about the computer to produce a paper using WRITER.
WRITER is designed to run on a VAX computer running the VMS operating system.
For more information about WRITER, write to :
The Quintilian Analysis
This program is concerned primarily with identification and definition of style. It is not concerned with the emchanics of language or with content. Our presumption, in this program, is that the text being examined already satisfies basic communication criteria--the words are spelled correctly, etc. This program does not identify errors and does not "correct" a text. Nor does it attempt in any way to evaluate what is being said.
This program is meant to serve as a kind of third reader for both teacher and student. After a teacher has read and commented upon a student's paper, the paper--in part or in whole--can be submitted to the computer for examination. The computer, via this program, will produce a commentary that is, obviously, quite objective (the program has never "met" either the teacher or the student, can't tell men from women, etc.)--and this objective commentary can then be evaluated and discussed by both teacher and student. The program's printout can serve as a basis for teacher/student discussion--and the student can be encouraged to examine his/her writing to discover those characteristics that have led the computer to say what it has said. Even if the student and/or teacher disagree with the program's analysis, the analysis can prove valuable by inaugurating closer examination of the text and a more thoughtful consideration of what is happening, stylistically, in the text.