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Learning to write involves several obvious transitions that, on further investigation, appear to have major psychological implications. One is the transition from oral to graphic expression, which, according to Vygotsky (1978), is a major step in the development of symbolic thought. Another is the transition from face-toface communication to communication with a remote audience, which, according to Olson (1977) and Goody and Watt (1963), is a critical step in the development of abstract logical reasoning. In this chapter we examine another transition involved in mastering written composition, one that entails a major transformation in the person's whole system for producing language. It is the transition from a language production system dependent at every level on inputs from a conversational partner to a system capable of functioning autonomously. ¹ When people converse they help each other in numerous, mostly unintentional ways. They provide each other with a continual source of cues-cues to proceed, cues to stop, cues to elaborate, cues to shift topic, and a great variety of cues that

¹We are indebted to David Bartholomae, who reviewed an earlier version of this chapter, for bringing home to us the need to draw a sharp distinction between producing text autonomously (which is what we are talking about) and producing autonomous text (which Olson, 1977, talked about). It is easy to get them confused, because they both have to do with a contrast between oral and written discourse. We are talking about how the language production system functions, while Olson was talking about the nature of the product issuing from the system. Although …