Collaboration in writing is not confined to conventional multiple authorship and peer editing, but extends across the text to include its readers. Strong support for language development comes from dialogic situations in which student writing is created as a response to some other utterance, and yet classrooms rarely support such situations. The site of composing must support dialogic motives for invention. In a course designed to accomplish this objective, students' writing styles demonstrably changed to become more functional in a setting stressing dialogue and communication among peers. A method for teaching writing can be based on dialogic techniques by allowing students to generate topics of study, by communicating via computer network, and by concentrating on responding to what other participants are saying and thinking. A number of excerpts from student comments regarding one student's topic of study reveal the extent to which a dialogic approach can help students to focus and determine their final papers. In addition, the thoughtful and sometimes lengthy comments on a final report, again all written by other students, show an appreciative support for the accomplishment as well as suggestions for further questions related to the topic. Finally, several excerpts from student evaluations of the course illustrate the ways in which they believe their writing changed during the process of the course, changes due mainly to the fact of the writing being embedded in dialogic chains of conversation in which motives for invention are emphatically social. (HB)