This article presents the results of three comparative analyses on forty-seven student papers in order to examine the effectiveness of a basic writing course in developing students' academic writer identity. The course curriculum, grounded in social identity theory, focuses on the core writing concepts and dispositions that promote writer…

Suggests that autobiography is a fertile context for students to develop a facility for reading and writing and for defining and constructing themselves within an academic setting. Discusses using autobiography in an introduction to academic discourse course for developmental college students. (RS)

Describes a high-school course called "Autobiography" that discusses nonfiction and gender. Describes how students write their autobiographies piecemeal while reading and discussing a partly autobiographical work of fiction, and how the course eventually centers around identifying biases of different sorts in one's own and in others' writing.…