In an effort to improve our understanding of intellectual discussion in the undergraduate seminar and how it may be enhanced, three interdisciplinary discussion-based classes taken by primarily first-year students at a liberal arts college were studied ethnographically. Specifically, this article explores the struggles experienced by the students…

Through the use of a case study, this article explores the role of talk in underprepared students' acquisition of academic discourse. Conversation analysis as a linguistic framework is used to examine the interactions of students participating in a small writing group. Tracing the progress of one student's paper, I explore how students'…