Arranged chronologically, the essays in this book trace the attempts of one writing teacher (Patricia Bizzell) to understand theoretically--and to respond pedagogically--to what happens when students from diverse backgrounds learn to use language in college. Over the 10-year period chronicled in the essays that make up the book, the teacher sees herself primarily as an advocate for students whose social or ethnic backgrounds may have offered them little experience with academic discourse, sometimes called "basic writers." In the last few essays and in the intellectual autobiography written as the introduction to the book, however, the teacher calls her previous work into question on the grounds that her self-appointment as an advocate for basic writers may have been presumptuous. Essays in the book are "Introduction"; "The Ethos of Academic Discourse"; "Thomas Kuhn, Scientism, and English Studies"; "'Inherent' Ideology, 'Universal' History, 'Empirical' Evidence, and 'Context-Free' Writing: Some Problems in E. D. Hirsch's 'The Philosophy of Composition'" (co-authored with Bruce Herzberg); "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know about Writing"; "College Composition: Initiation into the Academic Discourse Community"; "Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness: An Application of Paulo Freire"; "William Perry and Liberal Education"; "What Happens When Basic Writers Come to College?"; "Composing Processes: An Overview"; "Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Composition Studies"; "What Is a Discourse Community?"; "Arguing about Literacy";"Beyond Anti-Foundationalism to Rhetorical Authority: Problems Defining Cultural Literacy'"; and Afterword. (RS)