Writing instruction today emphasizes the rules and conventions of rhetorical analysis and thus tends to isolate the students' personalities from their use of language. To be effective, writing instruction must begin with the exploration of events and issues that determine experience and with the ideas formed from attempts to understand life. One kind of exploration of experience can be provided through a confrontation with literature. For example, the first lesson for a sixth-grade class studying "The Pushcart War" was taught by tape recorder to evoke a personal dilemma for the students similar to the one presented in the book, where man is pitted against the machine. When the class wrote about their reactions to working for a machine, they began to comprehend and then to communicate their attitudes. During such attempts to organize experience and share it with others, students can develop a sense both of audience and of personal identity. (JB)