This paper explains how first-year composition students wrote business sales letters about short fiction and then revised those letters into full-fledged literary essays that analyzed the stories. By completing these two writings back-to-back (that is, experiencing the metagenres between business writing and literary analysis), students not only…

This article describes a reading/writing strategy known as the "T Analysis" that encourages students to engage literary texts intensely without having to demonstrate that engagement with a formal paper. The "T Analysis" is named for a large "T" configuration that will appear on a student's paper when the exercise is completed. The "T" helps…