Montaigne composed his essays through an elaborate and extensive process of additions, a revision process that was ongoing throughout the quarter century he was working on them. His painstaking practice of addition helps complicate the "self" Montaigne often tries to convey—that of a casual, digressive, "open" writer. The revisions also supply a metacommentary on his writing project (including his tendency to make additions). In these self-reflective additions, he openly grapples with the dominance of writing mentors, particularly Seneca and Plutarch, and he works out a theory of audience for his work.

This essay examines the writing done at the University of New Hampshire in the period between 1928 and 1942. It argues that while there was extensive writing from personal experience, this writing did not perform the “turn” where the writer claims a new form of self-understanding. It goes on to suggest that work with this largely observational genre may develop important skills for the young writers.

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This study uses the performative theory of Erving Goffman to understand the conversational roles taken on by students and teachers during college-level writing conferences. According to Goffman, both teacher and student are engaged in the performance of roles, and they cooperate so that discrepant information (revelations that might undermine these roles) are not revealed. Some of that information can come out, however, in what Goffmanc alls “backstage” areas. This study creates two “backstage” areas where both an instructor and the two students involved can listen to tapes of their conferences and provide commentary about tensions and miscommunications in the conferences. The study particularly examines confusions about terminology concerning unity in writing and the negotiation of roles in the conference. The perspective taken in this study illuminates the specific performative demands of a writing conference, suggesting that because these demands are new to some students, their teachers may need to engage in considerable role-shifting to ease the conversational burden and help the students “save face.”

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This study uses protocol analysis techniques to compare written evaluations of college freshmen with those of instructors in Freshmen English sections. These evaluations of two students papers indicate that many students apply criteria that are significantly and consistently different from those of instructors. The differences suggest that composition teachers who urge students to “write for their peers” may put themselves in a position of having to reward writing that fails to meet basic expectations of academic audiences.