A study was conducted to see if the use of word processing programs during composition instruction for basic writers would result in a larger quantity of writing and more global revision while writing. Subjects were 18 fifth, sixth, or seventh grade students who had been referred for remedial reading and writing instruction. They were assigned to two groups for composition instruction, nine to a class that used word processors and nine to a class that did not. The focus of class instruction was on such composition strategies as prewriting, draft writing, revising, and editing. In teaching revising strategies, the emphasis was placed on global revisions rather than on surface or word level revisions. Most of the writing was done in class, and the rough drafts and completed papers from 12 of 16 assignments were collected and analyzed. Analysis indicated little difference in the length of compositions between the two groups. The word processing group, however, turned in more rough drafts than the nonword processing group. They also made 51% of their revisions at surface and word levels, 25% at phrase and clause levels, and 24% at sentence and paragraph levels. Comparable figures for the nonword processsing group were 58%, 28%, and 14% respectively. In most cases, revisions were improvements in the quality of composition. The findings suggest that while it appears that word processing can be used to enhance the teaching of written composition, it cannot substitute for good instruction in the entire writing process. (RBW)