Tentative results from a study of the writing improvement of college freshmen indicate that underlying linguistic competence can be released by exercises that allow students to use what they already know, that syntactic competence increases with maturity, and that complex pedagogic variables contribute to writing growth. Although a number of studies have found that sentence-combining groups display greater writing improvement than control groups, perhaps sentence-combining should be viewed as a helpful device to overcome the effects of large classes, rather than as necessary to improved writing. Gains in syntactic and usage skills may result from very small classes, constant feedback, constant rewriting, and a focus on levels smaller than the essay. (AEA)