Four recently developed computer programs can help students with the composition process. The first, a prewriting program, helps students prepare to write by asking them a series of questions, similar to those an instructor would ask, intended to help them think more deeply about their subject. The second writing program also contains prewriting questions, but attempts to show subsequently how information gathered during the questioning can be structured during the actual writing stage by creating a model rough draft of the essay. The third program, developed as a text editing system for journalism assignments, relies on a matching routine that takes a series of predetermined key words and searches for them in the student's news story. The program acknowledges pertinent information and points out errors with an explanation when the pertinent information is missing. In the fourth program, also a text editing program, the computer "reads" the entered essays, then prints out statistics on sentence length, use of prepositions, and use of "to be" verbs and nouns ending in "tion." The statistics are followed by an appropriate warning about convoluted sentences or the excess of the "tion" nouns or "to be" verbs. These programs do not actually understand the essay, and better programs will be developed as more people contribute to the task; but they do successfully take students through their assigned phases in the writing process, freeing the instructor for more individualized instruction. (HTH)