Everyone knows how tiresome is to write a long piece of work, rewrite it and than if one is satisfied with it copy it to make the final draft so it will be ready to hand it in. I have done it many times and I am sure it is not only me who becomes annoyed by this long procedure. But there is the perfect solution to this problem and it is not other than a word processor. It has great advantages not only in writing and rewriting but also in making one a better writer.
In my paper I would like to emphasize the seriousness of the usage of a word processor for university students and for this I use my research that I made by asking students about their experiences. I asked five students, who had to write many essays in the past, about the method they use in writing, in making the final draft of their works, their feelings about computers, and how they manage when they have to hand in type-written works. I would like to analyze the answers they had given and with the help of this I will give some tips on how to make life easier with using a word processor.
All of the students I asked claimed that they have used a computer for writing at least once, but their best friends in writing are their pen and paper and do not want to give up these tools in order to replace them by a computer. Many students have a fear of machines and think that it would be too difficult to learn how to use a word processor. They said they feel lost in technology and the most they know is how to turn on and off their televisions. In order to be up to date everyone should learn fast. Modern technology supports our life and we only need to make it our friend. But if people get used to something, there isn’t an easy way to give it up for something unknown. That is why the first step is the hardest to make towards new technology. But once people come to a decision they will not want to turn back to their old and ponderous habits. They only need to take that first step.
Two of the students I asked are faithful to ordinary techniques and when they make a project the wastebasket gets filled up with creased pieces of paper of handwritten sketches. When they have to hand in type-written essays they type it with a typewriter, edit it, than rewrite, than type it again and if they still do not feel satisfied with it retype again. The example of these two students show how elaborate this method is and something new is needed. Not only would using a word processor save time and energy, but also assist in writing, rewriting, editing and printing.
Another student declared that the time, when she realised that she needed to learn more about computers was a year ago, when her ten-year-old cousin showed her how well he can operate a computer. She realised that her cousin knew more about computers than she did. Suddenly she felt ashamed and decided to join a computer course where she will be taught how to use different programes. Nevertheless she also needed to hand in type-written essays at JPU so the course seemed useful. The course, she said, was excellent, although she was taught basic skills how to use a computer for office work. A writer does not need to know all these skills, but some special triks which one can learn even by exploring the program on his/her own.
What is so useful in a word processor that a writer can not afford to do without? It puts the writer’s words right in front of his/her eyes onto the screen of the monitor. It gives shape to the thoughts. Most students just write down the first thing that comes to their mind but the first draft usually have something wrong with it: it is not clear enough, it is too long or short, it is full of unnecessary words. But it is tiring to go back and make repairs if one have to retype the whole text again. With a word processor it becomes fun. The writer can rearrange the text as many times as he/she wants, because no matter how much he/she adds or changes the computer will do the work and rearrange itself. When the final version is ready the printer can do its job and print everything that is on the screen. If one would like to add, for instance, a sentence to a paragraph he/she can simply type it in and the computer will make room for it and rearrange the whole paragraph. The same way the opposite can be done. If there is an unwanted sentence the writer only need to press the DELETE key.
The essence of writing is rewriting that makes a piece of work complete and a word processor makes this procedure smooth. Only one of the five students I asked told me that she is the kind of writer who likes to write a paragraph and rewrite it right away until she feels it perfect and than she can continue writing the next one. The others write the whole text for one go and than go back and rewrite it. But what does rewriting mean at all? It does not mean the rewriting of the whole text. It means shaping and polishing, replacing words to make a text more eloquent. The computer arranges the text to pages that contains the same number of lines, gives options to choose from different shapes and sizes of letters, counts the pages and puts the number on it , and gives possibility to add new information to the text. But what happens if the writer likes the first version better than the rewritten one? The computer have an answer for this problem too. The writer needs to save all his/her drafts so he/she can choose the best one from them.
A student I interviewed told me that she likes to see the previous sentences of her text when she writes and keeps going back to the previous pages. With a word processor this method becomes easy and the whole text is in front of the eye of the writer. She also said that when she used a word processor and printed her text it looked so proficient that she did not believe that she had written that.
During my research I found out that using a word processor is becoming more and more popular. Students teach each other how to use it or learn by their own experiences. But still, there are many who are affraid of the machine and ask someone else to do it for them. For those my advise is the following:
‘The word processor can concentrate your mind on the craft of writing, revising and editing-much more powerfully than this has ever been possible, because your words are right in front of you in all their infinite possibility, waiting to be infinitely reshaped. Technology, the great villain, turns out to be your friend.’(1)
Using a word processor for writing makes the writer enthusiastic, fills him/her with energy and takes half of the work off the writer’s shoulder because he/she does not have to worry about technology, the computer does it for him/her. The twentieth century gave us, humans, great machines and gadgets to make our life easier, so why not use it?
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