Drawing primarily on theories of situated learning, this study compares novices learning written genres in two different institutional settings within similar disciplines: university students in public administration courses and graduate student interns placed in government agencies. Observational and textual analyses of novices learning to write the genres necessary for these settings point to differences in writing goals, guide-learner roles, text evaluations, and learning sites. The results show that when students move from the university to the workplace, they not only have to learn new genres but they need to learn new ways to learn these new genres.

Using the theoretical perspective offered by recent genre studies, this study compares student and professional discourse within the same field through a set of case studies written for a third-year course in financial analysis—writing that was conceived and designed by the instructor to simulate workplace discourse. Observational and textual analyses revealed the radically distinct social action undertaken in this student writing as compared to related workplace discourse, despite the simulation. Social motives, exigent rhetorical contexts, social roles, and reading practices were all distinct in ways that profoundly affected both discourse processes and products. At the same time, certain commonalities were apparent in the student and workplace writing. These shared features point to ways in which student writing enables and enacts entry into sociocultural communities.