Focusing on the teacher in the problems basic writers experience, a study analyzed the written interaction between a teacher and basic writers, culled from a larger ethnographic study of one freshman composition class. The purpose was to characterize the mode of discourse within a communicative exchange called "theme-ing," which begins when the teacher makes the assignment and ends when the teacher evaluates the final draft of the paper. In the exchange between the students and the teacher, the teacher used a special linguistic register for the comments which shaped basic writers' revisions. Findings suggest basic writers interpret all comments by the teacher as having a strong editive directive force to "correct this mistake" and that basic writers seem less capable of learning from the revising process than do successful students. These problems can perhaps be avoided with several possible solutions: (1) teachers need to be more aware of the communicative implications of their comments and make the purposes of the comments more explicit; (2) teachers can seek alternative commenting procedures which focus not on the writer's errors but on the reader's problem(s) with the piece of writing; (3) teachers can give students fail-proof writing tasks by providing them with the criteria to be used for evaluating a piece; and (4) teachers need to share positive comments with basic writers. (Three notes are included, and four appendixes outlining the suggested procedures and 18 references are attached.) (MS)