Examines the student and professional discourse within the same field through a set of case studies written for a third-year course in financial analysis. Reports on the distinct social actions undertaken by student writers as compared with professional practices. Shows commonalities of student and workplace writing. (HB)

Describes the way invention is relevant to the practice of technical writing. Studies three engineering students engaged in a real-world project. Shows how the students' technical work and invention for the final report were simultaneous activities. Claims that invention for and through writing overlaps with technical invention. (HB)

Argues that historians of literacy have not taken into account America's Hispanic literacy legacy. Illustrates the depth and breadth of Hispanic contributions to American literacy. Contrasts images of "literacy deficient" Hispanic Americans with the rich legacy that their forebears brought to early America. (HB)

Argues for an activity-based theory of genre knowledge. Provides data from case study research concerning "insider knowledge" about genres of academic cultures. Proposes five general principles as a basis for a theory of genre. (HB)

Discusses interdisciplinary writing as a recasting of disciplinary boundaries insofar as it negotiates the borders between the various disciplinary rhetorics involved. Explores the work of S. E. Jelliffe, a prominent physician-writer, as a prime example of a boundary rhetoric. (HB)

Describes the transformational-generative model of grammar and discusses how this theory has influenced composition teaching and theory. Outlines a new model of language being developed by cognitive scientists and how this model might inform composition in the future. (HB)

Considers how readers form impressions of writers' personalities while reading their texts. Reports on a series of studies which asked readers to respond to college application essays by high school students. Concludes that responses to texts concerning personality are highly predictable and, thus, can be influenced by the writer. (HB)

Examines the strategies used to read science articles written in the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRD) format. Shows how three reader roles (those of the scientist, editor, and reviewer) influence reading strategies. Discusses implications for the understanding of the function and development of the research article and for…

Draws on the perceptions and experiences of upper-division students enrolled in writing-intensive (WI) classes in their majors at a large state university. Discusses findings as they relate to the ideologies of writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines. Suggests greater attention to a field's inquiry methods and strategies for…

Discusses the importance of establishing the reliability of independent observers' judgments. Argues that the percentage of agreement measure is more difficult to interpret than are correlation measures. Recommends that the field of literacy research adopt correlation as the standard method for estimating the reliability of observers' judgments.…

Replicates C. Haas and L. Flower's 1988 think-allowed reading study. Finds that, when reading a passage on a topic more familiar to first-year students, the undergraduates generated substantially more rhetorical comments than they did with the Haas and Flower passage. Cautions researchers and teachers to avoid hasty assumptions about underlying…

Describes an assessment carried out in collaboration with the administrators of a large freshman English course. Relates how the assessment team worked with instructors to identify goals and design assessment tasks. Finds no substantial improvement on any of the five course goals for students who took the course. Reflects on why instructors may…

Offers a structural analysis of an explanatory text written by a 12-year-old pupil to demonstrate how the PISA technique (Procedures for Incremental Structural Analysis) contributes to the understanding of conceptual processes in writing. Discusses evidence for the validity of such analysis and its generalizability. (SR)

Outlines the elements of the human rhetorical potential, arguing for a psychologically plausible theory of meaning. Examines recent work in cognitive neural science to see if the human rhetorical potential is biologically, or neurologically, plausible. Suggests further research on the human rhetorical potential as it relates to discourse…

Examines the problems that four international graduate students of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds encountered in the process of adapting to the requirements of discipline-specific written discourses during their first year of studies in the United States. Suggests that international students need assistance to adjust more easily to…