This study investigated, by means of anethnographic approach, what exactly occurs when Japanesenovice writers are socialized into the undergraduate thesisgenre and how the processes differ among disciplines. Datawere collected from 10 undergraduate students enrolled invarious humanities disciplines at two Japanese universities.The study identified the genre chains in psychology andnon-psychology consisting of the thesis genre and therelated genres to capture the whole picture of theirsocialization processes, and then examined cognitive andsociocultural aspects of their learning. All of the fourpsychology students were systematically inducted intoresearch and experimental reports, a genre similar toundergraduate theses, in their first 2 years with emphasison acquisition of knowledge and skills of the researchprocess and report writing, which appear to follow thetradition of the natural sciences. In the last 2 years, thestudents were then weekly guided by their supervisorsspecifically in writing their undergraduate thesis in groups.The non-psychology students were socialized into theundergraduate thesis only in the last 2 years, with a par-ticular focus on subject-matter knowledge, which wassolely dependent on their supervisors, in the group and/orindividual sessions. On the other hand, the psychologystudents experienced less difficulty in writing their thesesthan the non-psychology students. The study concludes thatthe highly prescriptive and regulated training for writing inthe disciplinary context at the early stage via the writtengenres similar to the thesis were likely to account for thepsychology students’ success.

• Cross-Disciplinary Variations: Japanese Novice Writers’Socialization into the Undergraduate Thesis