One approach to teaching organization to a writing class is to subdivide the organizational processes. One subdivision recognizes that certain compositions have a predictable format--they put expected parts in predictable places. Following a format at appropriate times is a skill that should be taught, or at least insisted upon, at the beginning of a writing course. The second subdivision involves helping the writer pull together or make sense of the hazy strands or ill-fitting parts of an original idea. The third subdivision entails one of the last things a writer does--include organizational signals to indicate to readers what they should expect and to show how the various parts of a composition interrelate. Presenting these subdivisions of organization shows students that organizing requires many different intellectual tasks and demands an understanding of the structural needs of different kinds of writing assignments. Such an approach also requires the development of more varied assignments that challenge students in as many organizational tasks as possible. Rather than relay the instructions given in current textbooks, teachers should advise their sudents that their writing will be organized if they let the reader know what to expect and then satisfy that expectation. (HOD)