This study considered the efficacy of using students' personal discourse to support learning academic discourse. Two forms of personal discourse in particular were studied: personal writing in the journal and talk about academic discourse during peer writing conferences.

Participating in the study were the forty students (twenty during fall semester, and twenty during spring semester) enrolled in my developmental reading and writing courses at a community college. While I examined the writing and talk of all students, I inspected more closely the course work produced by three focal students.

While the findings indicated that personal writing in the journal did help students develop content and mediated their understanding of unfamiliar academic subject matter, it was less effective with supporting learning academic discourse structures. In the case of peer writing conferences, the study's findings challenge some of the research literature, which suggests that students create a transitional language whereby peers explain academic expectations in a discourse that student writers can understand. Personal discourse in both the journal and peer writing conferences is most helpful to students with a better sense of academic discourse. Less experienced students are less able to spot competencies in their personal discourse and thus exploit it as a resource to make the leap to academic discourse.