Investigates how and when novice employees (who are also seniors at a cooperative engineering college) learn to write like engineers. Finds that students perceive abstract rules and training as least useful and view the embodied experience of models and interaction with experts as most productive, particularly when combined with practice and…

Outlines two hypotheses about the reasons for obscurity in expository writing and notes that neither accounts for the general results of an exploratory study of the writing of postgraduates nor for the individual cases presented. Argues that a crucial factor is a person's implicit model of expository writing. (FL)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 25 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) basic writers in the community college; (2) the power inclusion model and the politics of voice in the teaching of composition; (3) lay and professional…