Contends that evaluations of student writing come not from some transcendent realm but from the discursive practices by which teachers authorize themselves within a given community. Argues that basic writers need explicit knowledge of such practices, and proposes a language-centered curriculum to teach it. (HB)

Two graduate students teaching a required first-year composition course at the University of Arizona designed a classroom environment in which they could explore with students the invisible rules governing black and white people's notions of what constitutes "appropriate" communication. In many ways, their efforts at this large, public…

Viewing writing as a way to heal wounds and even reconstruct past experiences also helps heal the composition discipline's dichotomy between the academic and the personal, the self and the institution. Academicians are not the only writers undermined by this perceived separation: most incoming university students, in particular basic writers,…