A B S T R A C TAlthough teaching argumentative writing in schools is often about teaching argumentative forms, this instructional approach limits students' flexibility and choice as writers, readers, and meaning makers. An alternative method, rooted in tenets of genre theory, offers a different approach. Rather than treating argument as a static form, genre theory assumes that genres ( including argumentative genres) are situated, typified ways that people make moves through writing to accomplish goals through language. Taking a genre theory and sociocultural, discourse lens, this article explores how a teacher in an Advanced Placement Literature course approached the teaching of argumentative writing. Through a moves analysis of focal student essays and a discourse analysis of classroom talk, the study asks two questions: (1) How does the teacher, through classroom talk, support students in making moves of literary argument? (2) How do students make these moves in speaking and writing? Findings identify argumentative moves and submoves that students made in their argumentative essays. The teacher supported students' learning by explicitly pointing to these moves in model essays, posing questions that prompted students to make the same moves in classroom talk, and revoicing student responses in more disciplinary ways. Through small-and large-group discussions, students learned to make moves that they later made in essays. In identifying classroom talk moves that serve argumentative writing instruction in literary studies, these findings have implications for classroom-based argument writing instruction, for literacy teacher preparation and professional development, and for future research on approaches to teaching literature and writing.T he National Council of Teachers of English's (2016) position statement "Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing" forwards several beliefs about writing held by the professional organization: Writing grows out of many purposes, writing is embedded in complex social relations and their appropriate languages, everyone has the capacity to write, writing can be taught, teachers can help students become better writers, writing is a process, writing has a complex relation with talk, and writing and reading are related. These beliefs, which draw on research, theory, and the expertise of the researchers and teachers who drafted them, reflect an understanding of writing that is contextualized and complex and foregrounds students' agency as developing writers.However, the teaching and learning of argumentative writing in schools does not always reflect these tenets. Even in classrooms where the teaching of other types of writing, such as narrative or poetry, reflects more contextualized, student-driven, multimodal composing,