ABSTRACT
In most national education systems, students' writing development plays an important—though often unacknowledged—role in the crucial transition from secondary school to university. As Mary Muchiri , Mulamba, Myers, and Ndoloi have argued, writing development is, like all academic work, situated within complex national, regional, and local environments. And although academic work is increasingly international in scope, with "journals, conferences, publishers and research projects" all "linked by email, photocopies, faxes and airlines," Muchiri et al. suggest that "this apparent globalization is deceptive". In the United States, students specialize very late compared to students in other nations. Students in many countries specialize as early as age sixteen or seventeen, in the second two years of secondary school. The United States has a huge and extremely decentralized system of education both secondary and postsecondary, public and private. In secondary schools, students are typically sorted into tracks or "ability groups." These tracks sort students "destined" for higher education (and for more selective postsecondary education).
