This article is a report on an experiment in which the applicability of computer conferencing was tested in an L2 context. With five EAP students taking a content-area course, computer conferencing was used for two purposes: for discussions, and for introducing the students to the idea of writing as a process. In this way the students (and the tutor) could work at their leisure, free of a specific time and place. These arrangements had various interesting consequences. Compared with traditional classroom discussions, the students came to do most of the ‘talking’, taking on roles other than that of a student, and therefore using computer conferencing not just for answering the teacher's questions but for a number of other functions (such as disagreeing, challenging). Moreover, the feedback that the students got from each other in the process of writing two essays differed in quality from that given by the tutor with his red pen. This paper discusses these and other findings in greater detail, and gives suggestions for improving the system.