ABSTRACT
In their efforts to write in academic contexts, basic writers in the first year of college fall back on strategies acquired in their years of secondary school. This, of course, is well known, and studies not only demonstrate this contention but also catalog and explain the particular strategies on which students rely. Yet we need more knowledge about those strategies and how reliance on them affects students struggling to enter the world of college writing. Instruction is frequently made difficult because of the horizon of students’ assumptions, a “legacy of schooling” (Flower 224) whose boundaries limit the range of possibilities open to student writers; the difficulty is increased by a concomitant unfamiliarity with academic discourse and its conventions (Bartholomae). Students’ assumptions interfere with the acquisition of new strategies and hinder entrance to a discourse community. They also impede possible development of a critical stance toward authoritative conventions and ways of knowing (Mortenson and Kirsch 557).
