This study investigates students' work on analyzing a literary text, a cartoon strip, with focus on their use of instructional, analytical concepts. Excerpts from a group conversation and from individually written texts are analyzed from a sociocultural, dialogical perspective. The analysis of the conversation shows how such concepts help the students to study the text more closely and maintain an analytical focus. The use of concepts thus helps the students understand the text and what text analysis is about. The students' written texts show that they build on the understanding developed in the group discussion. The analytical focus in the discussion helps them maintain the understanding developed in group when they write individually. Thus, the use of analytical concepts contributes to mediating between group reasoning and individual writing. (Contains 4 notes and 2 figures.)