In this study, we analyzed how students from different interpretive communities shape their academic texts. Prospective educational researchers, prospective reading specialists, prospective teachers, and prospective nurses read an educational research article from which we had deleted the discussion section. After they had read the article, subjects completed it by writing a discussion section. We analyzed subjects' texts in terms of writers' manipulation of both content and procedural knowledge. Our findings suggest that mere participation in an interpretive community without explicit instruction in its ways of writing can enhance students' ability to write in that community. Our findings also suggest that participation in one interpretive community can facilitate writing in another community, provided the communities share discourse conventions.
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