Data from a study of graduate instructors in a composition teaching practicum show that the neglect of declarative knowledgeaboutlanguage is something that they were conscious of and wished to remedy. This finding supports arguments calling for reinstating a focus on linguistic knowledge in composition and writing studies programs.

This article profiles three new graduate instructors in a PhD program in literature who are teaching composition for the first time while enrolled in a teaching methods course. I argue that understanding graduate instructors’ prior beliefs about literacy has the potential to make practica instructors more sympathetic to the complex identity-based and ideological negotiations new graduate instructors must undertake in their first year of teaching while also pointing to ways to facilitate this work.