The instructional practice of imitation works most effectively as a developmental and remedial instrument within a writing-centered, student-centered pedagogy. In this context, imitation can accelerate natural language acquisition and encourage language competence and control, thus enabling student writers to focus their attention on particular and personal writing problems, whether structural, material, or stylistic. Imitation need not violate the underlying principle of writing as a process (as argued in the "New Rhetoric"), since imitation can be implemented to remedy the student writer's particular writing problems as they appear in the course of writing in a "real" rhetorical situation. Analyzing and emulating models within such an environment introduces the inexperienced writer to the idea of "writerliness"--to the reality of a writer's choices and the relationships that exist between them, such as which persona to project, which experiences to tap, which purpose to execute, which audience to address, and which code to use. Nor does imitation violate the sense of writing as discovery, associated with a theory of imagination and cognitive development. Students must be allowed to discover for themselves a natural writing process while the teacher's task is to familiarize them with available options. By imitating a variety of models and internalizing the various language patterns, student writers become aware of alternative forms of expression and the struggling novice becomes an effective stylist and a thinking writer. (NKA)