In this book, writing done by students in an academic context is investigated as a writing development phenomenon. A style-biographical part-corpus (various pieces of written work for seminars by a student author) and two experimental, quantitative part-corpora (writing samples from a fill-in-the-gaps test and parodistic introductory texts) are drawn upon to reconstruct the acquisition process in which student writers gradually conform to the institutional requirements bound up with the style of writing employed in academic texts.