Page 72 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

TRANSFORMING TEXTS 39

for a writer. Moreover, on screen, the mundane text becomes a vex-
ing process for a writer. Compare Takayoshi's idea with psychologist
Sherry Turkic's following observation about writing on a computer:

Why is it so hard for me to turn away from the screen?... I feel pressure
from a machine that seems itself to be perfect and leaves no one and
no other thing but me to blame. It is hard for me to walk away from a
not-yet-proofread text on the computer screen. In the electronic writ-
ing environment in which making a correction is as simple as striking a
delete key, I experience a typographical error not as a mere slip of at-
tention, but as a moral carelessness, for who could be so slovenly as
not to take the one or two seconds to make it right? The computer tan-
talizes me with its holding power... the promise that if I do it right, it will
do it right, and right away (1999, pp. 29-30)

Turkle's reflection on her own composing processes with the com-
puter raises serious questions for the writing process and the pro-
duction of a text as Composition has defined them over the last 30
years. As Takayoshi (1996) pointed out, students' self-awareness of
the text's various stages of completeness has often been distin-
guished by what she calls "traditional markers"—paper copies that
signify each stage of brainstorming, drafting, revising, and submit-
ting the final product (p. 250). When traditional markers disappear
or become transparent because a writer changes the medium from
papertext to screen, as Turkle indicated, he or she must now recon-
sider when a text is still in need of revision and when it might be
considered finished.
From what Turkle described, however, the computer creates a
feeling in the writer that the conversation is never quite complete.
Therefore, the student and the writing teacher must chart new
ways of developing textual awareness for producing online compo-
sitions without the traditional markers to guide them—even for
those workaday assignments that lead to larger projects or aca-
demic research.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A TRANSFORMED TEXT

Earlier in the chapter I made mention that many writing instructors
see little distinction between students writing with pen and paper
and with the computer. For these folks, writing is writing, regardless
of the medium. Also, for these same instructors, assessing an e-text