Gifted students' writing may exhibit stylistic dissonance--a mixture of basic writing features may coexist with features indicative of much higher levels of rhetorical control. A case study of an 11-year-old sixth grade student who attended a freshman composition course at an Arkansas university illustrates this dissonance. The poems and short stories he wrote in sixth grade and during a summer course exhibited many mature features, such as metacognition and revision skills. He was also an excellent peer tutor. His abilities allowed him to take the freshman composition course in which academic writing would be required, even though his elementary school teachers and principal thought he would not succeed because he spoke with a rural accent and came from a low-income family. He was classified as a basic writer in the college setting, because he was unprepared for the types of writing tasks he would encounter. An essay that he wrote revealed many surface errors such as spelling errors, dialect interference, and punctuation problems. Other basic writer's problems he exhibited included egocentrism (or writer based prose) and problems with focus. Yet, his abilities to revise, organize, and add detail to the text attested to his skills as well. It is important for teachers to learn to recognize the gifted child writer, even when surface problems mask their abilities. (The final draft of the essay written by the student and a bibliography are appended.) (SKC)