Increased specialisation of disciplinary cultures creates barriers for students who may not understand the genre, style and conventions of disciplinary writing. Academic literacies research recognises that literacy is a social practice where writing is inextricably linked to knowledge construction. Learning to write, therefore, requires meaning-making by students as they engage with the nature of questions asked and arguments constructed within a discipline. We have examined the proposition that immersive and dialogic environments promote learning of disciplinary writing by analysing students' lived experience during a science undergraduate research project. We adopted an academic literacy framework for a qualitative analysis of students' reflective journals as they wrote a critical review. We show that: (i) students initially struggled with assessment requirements, terminology and writing conventions; (ii) constructing the critical review was coupled to epistemological changes as they understood scientific argument; and (iii) they gained confidence in themselves as participants in the scientific community.