Claims compositionists misrecognize stylistic and institutionalized conventions of academic discourse in their own rhetoric and in the evaluation of their students. Argues that students should be included in the practices by which compositionists "normalize" these conventions. Suggests how students might be included in the evaluative…

Contends that evaluations of student writing come not from some transcendent realm but from the discursive practices by which teachers authorize themselves within a given community. Argues that basic writers need explicit knowledge of such practices, and proposes a language-centered curriculum to teach it. (HB)

Viewing writing as a way to heal wounds and even reconstruct past experiences also helps heal the composition discipline's dichotomy between the academic and the personal, the self and the institution. Academicians are not the only writers undermined by this perceived separation: most incoming university students, in particular basic writers,…