A text is the locus of many intersecting processes, the origins, character, and operative principles of which should be the main focus of its discussion in a writing class. These processes can be classified into the four major components of the communicative act: the writer, the reader, the social conditions of communication, and the historical and rhetorical context. In terms of process, a text records the writer's decisions, but students need guidance in making these rhetorically, contextually motivated choices. Text analysis in a writing class should focus critical attention on systematic relationships, ordering principles, and schemata, while critical reading of a text should lead students to an awareness of the interpretive conditions that our community imposes on a text. Composition readers tend to ignore the "writing" of the text, or its working. A review of some popular composition readers in light of current discourse studies and text theory revealed that the majority do not reflect, except sporadically, recent advances in these fields and that they operate on static, nonrhetorical conceptions of the text and on aesthetic and normative assumptions about the role of sample readings in composition class. (SRT)