The findings from a study of five students undertaken to determine how unskilled college writers compose, whether their writing processes can be analyzed in a systematic manner, and what an increased understanding of those processes suggests about the nature of composing and about the manner in which writing is taught are presented in this paper. The first part summarizes the goals of the study, the kinds of data collected, and the research methods employed. The second part is a synopsis of the case study of one of the student writers. The third part presents a condensed version of the findings on the composing process and discusses these findings in light of current pedagogical practice and research design. Appendixes contain writing topics used in the study, student writing samples, and copies of composing style sheets. (FL)