Focusing on recent composition theory, this paper offers suggestions for writing teachers in applying concepts of dialogic discourse directly to the pedagogy of the college writing course. The first section of the paper addresses the influence of the social constructionist work on interpretation theory by Richard Rorty, Clifford Geertz, and Stanley Fish on composition theorists such as Kenneth Bruffee, John Trimbur, and Harvey Wiener. The second section deals with the function of text in a writing classroom and how concepts of textuality help control the dialogic process considered central to literacy while examining the metaphors and the different cultural perspectives of Wolfgang Iser, Mikhail Bakhtin, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. and Kenneth Burke for help in formulating a useful method of directing collaborative learning. The third section presents a detailed analysis of Stephen Jay Gould's "The Guano Ring" as an example of scientific writing that uses narrative and dramatic structure to explore phenomena that writers and readers experience together but that retains the basic heuristic characteristic of the scientist. The final section of the paper uses Gould's essay as the basis for two sequences of classroom activities that work toward turning informed readers into writers who can use their understanding of intratextuality as they write. The first sequence involves students in dialogic responses to particular expressions in Gould's text, while the second proposes a prereading sequence of activities to help students appreciate the interplay of subtexts in Gould's essay. Footnotes and references are appended. (NKA)