Stimulating Rhetorical Invention in English Composition through Computer-Assisted Instruction

摘要

The impulse for this research was to combine the renewed interest in teaching invention--the process of exploring a subject to discover ideas or arguments--with the developing technology of instructional computing. the first of three major conclusions was that 'open-ended' or exploratory, supplementary computer-assisted instruction (CAI) which encouraged growth in the number and the sophistication of ideas could be programmed. The second conclusion was that a systematic inquiry using one of three popular heuristic methods made the experimental groups more alike with respect to the quantity and quality of their ideas and significantly different from a control group. The third conclusion was that the computer-administered, posttest methodology represented a more stringent way for controlling and later replicating quasi-experimental research in rhetoric.