Att skriva utan penna : En studie av datorns betydelse för skrivande på gymnasienivå

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate how important computers are for text production in upper secondary school level, and to find out what attitudes some students have towards computers in writing classes. I have let 44 students in the Swedish gymnasium course Swedish B write an argumentative essay. Half of the group wrote using paper and pencil, and the other half used computers. The essays were graded, and the language and length of the texts were analyzed. The students also filled in a questionnaire with questions on computer aided writing classes. The results showed that the texts that were written with computers contained a significant larger amount of words and fewer spelling mistakes. I could also see a tendency that the students who had written with computers had more correct paragraphs, but the hand written texts contained more mistakes on sentence structure level. The questionnaire showed that the majority of the students mostly see advantages with computers in writing classes. They appreciate the possibilities to change the text, they write faster using the computer and they benefit from the spelling check. A few disadvantages with computers were also mentioned. The students felt that computer written texts were less personal, and they also saw a risk that old material was reused by the student, instead of him or her producing new texts.