In this article, we describe an approach to uncovering learners' literacy-oriented conceptualizations while they are enrolled in transitional, or developmental, reading and writing classes in a college context. This approach entailed eliciting and then analyzing the metaphors for academic literacies produced by students in 15 sections of a mandatory paired reading and writing course. We examine major themes that emerged from our analysis en route to promoting and discussing the utility of short stem prompts as being beneficial to instructors for understanding their students' conceptualizations of reading and writing for their own pedagogical purposes. We conclude with an extended pedagogical implications section, wherein we provide narrative descriptions of the use of metaphors in a college transitional reading class as practical suggestions for how such prompts can be used in classroom settings to support students' apprenticeships into academic literacy practices. (Contains 2 tables.)