This chapter investigates problems that novice writers, especially learners of English, have in acquiring lexical features of written discourse. It describes features of an interactive writing kit (WordPilot) which assists them to access authentic text, then to transfer patterns they explore there to their own writing. Relevant text corpora and specific lexical databases are made available during the writing process through the mediation of this integrated electronic reference, which incorporates several applications, including a concordancer, dictionary and thesaurus. This learning and production device has been implemented for Cantonese-speaking students in Hong Kong for whom English is a Foreign Language, but the general principles have relevance to writers at any point on the continuum of language proficiency. The chapter also illustrates problems in the presentation of lexical patterns to novice writers of limited English proficiency. As a gateway to text, it provides novice writers opportunities to explore language features, and it assists academic gate keepers in initiating learners into discourse.