ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the writing processes of three diverse secondary students who are responding to Personal Statement (PS) prompts as they apply for admission to University of California campuses, contending with the juxtapositions between their own identities and cultures and as their previous textual experiences. It examines some of the ‘laminated transformations’ required and the tensions resulting from diverse students’ attempts to complete their PS writing task, resulting in their resistance to what appears to be the appropriate alignment and externalisation required by their audiences. The chapter discusses three of P. Prior’s terms for the writing process, transformation, appropriation and externalisation, to indicate some of the challenges for the students and their responses to these challenges. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the long writing process related to the students’ sincere efforts to use what they knew to appropriate a PS macrostructure.
