Word processing in college: Its effects on learning disabled students' writing quality and quantity and writing apprehension

We explored the effect of using a word processor on writing apprehension, as well as the quality and quantity of the written product in a group of learning-disabled (LD) (N = 12) and non-learning-disabled (NLD) (N = 12) college students. Subjects wrote essays with a word processor and with paper and pencil. Raters evaluated these essays for content, organization, sentence structure, diction, and mechanics. We also assessed apprehension related to writing at baseline and prior to using each writing medium. Although the LD students were more apprehensive than the NLD students prior to writing, introducing the word processor condition decreased their apprehension to a level comparable to that of the NLD students. These findings may indicate that the word processor may help in efforts to motivate students to write and to improve their self-images as writers.