Motivated by a fear that she may have plagiarized, the author considers the possibility that plagiarism might be understood as a transgression against reading as well as against writing. Drawing on Philip Eubanks's work in "Metaphor and Writing," the article proposes that one reason for composition studies' ambivalent relationship to…

Reconsiders the assumptions writing teachers make about students' literacy practices. Chooses students in the "center," neither particularly successful nor recalcitrant failures, to demonstrate a way of reading the rhetorical constructions of students' texts to understand the decisions they make in composing. Sketches implications of…

Contrasts a recent collection of "best" student essays with a report reviewing a 1929 test in English that was used for making college admissions decisions. Concludes that writing teachers have been as much or more interested in who they want their students to be as in what they want their students to write. (RS)