Abstract:
This study attempted to compare typed and handwritten essays of Iranian EFLstudents in terms of length, spelling, and grammar. To administer the study, the researchers utilized Alice Touch Typing Tutor software to select 15 upper intermediate students with higher ability to write two essays: one typed and the other handwritten. The students were both males and females between the ages of 22 to 35. The analyses of the students’ scores in the three mentioned criteria through three paired samples t-tests indicate that typed essays are significantly better than handwritten ones in terms of length of texts and grammatical mistakes, but not significantly different in spelling mistakes. Positive effects of typing can provide a logical reason for students, especially TOEFL applicants, to spend more time on acquiring typing skill and also for teachers to encourage their students with higher typing ability to choose typed format in their essays.
Machine summary:
"The analyses of the students’ scores in the three mentioned criteria through three paired samples t-tests indicate that typed essays are significantly better than handwritten ones in terms of length of texts and grammatical mistakes, but not significantly different in spelling mistakes.
Keywords: typed, handwritten, spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, length of text Introduction Improving the students’ writing ability, as one of the essential skills in learning every language, has always been an important obsession for many teachers, and, therefore, many different methods have been proposed.
Thus, length of text, spelling mistakes, and grammatical mistakes, as three important components of every essay, were selected to be compared in handwritten and typed essays of those EFL students who have higher typing skill to see whether there was a significant difference among these two writing mediums in terms of length, spelling mistakes, and grammatical mistakes or not?
Therefore, the last null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis, that is, there is a significant difference in the amount of grammatical mistakes of handwritten and typed essays of Iranian EFL students, was supported.
Regarding the higher speed of typing and lower amount of grammatical mistakes, and by having access to the spell checking capability of word processor, the students who type will certainly create more accurate and longer texts in a short time in comparison to the ones who write with pen and paper.
The effect of word-processors on the spelling errors and the difference between the number of typing and handwriting spelling mistakes of students at Islamic Azad University, TAFT Branch."