ABSTRACT
A major breakthrough in the teaching of writing has been made possible by the convergence of two recent developments in science and technology. Cognitive science, which brings together the disciplines of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics, has begun to provide us with the theoretical means for constructing formal process theories of human cognition. Thus we now have many of the tools needed for constructing a process theory of writing. At the same time, technology is being developed to manipulate and edit text. Soon this technology will be relatively inexpensive and commonplace. It should be possible to merge these two developments into a computer-based “Writing Land” for teaching and assisting people in writing. This would be an environment with writing tasks and games that can provide the basis for a computer-based writing curriculum.
