This article describes an assignment piloted in spring of 2008 called the Rhetorical Analysis Project, which required students to analyze three different texts addressing a common issue, compose an argument about the representation of that issue as illustrated by those texts, and revise that argument to match a rhetorical model they chose from some popular magazine. Such tasks have the potential to help students develop the rhetorical awareness and meta-knowledge about writing that research suggests may help them transfer their learning about writing to new contexts and tasks. My investigation with students a semester after the class suggests that they believe they have experienced lasting changes in their reading and writing processes as a result of it, and therefore that such assignments may provide powerful alternatives to the formulaic writing that is taking increasing root in schools in response to high-stakes testing. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)