Ethnographers in composition must consider their work as a set of discursive practices which are materially affected by the institutional and disciplinary practices of the ethnographer. The value of such ethnographic research for a writing program is that it provides a useful critique of disciplinary practices in English, rather than a critique of the "foreign" practices of other disciplines. In an examination of her own writings for an economics class, a researcher concluded that student papers tended to correspond to ideas and forms of expression present in instructor lectures and the class textbook. By contrast, the study of English is preoccupied with individual achievements of writers. In composition classes, student writers are discouraged from using cliches or from imitating other authors. The question of whether the celebration of individual achievement in writing tends to isolate students, particularly in marginalized groups, is worthy of analysis. Also worth examining is whether institutional entities place obstacles in the way of students' learning processes. (SG)