Separate articles describe courses designed to teach basic writing to academically underprepared college students. Six courses are described: a program which teaches students how to reason correctly, on the premise that students cannot write if they cannot think; a course which teaches academically underprepared black students how language functions; an intensive summer program, meshing reading and writing, which moves from the fable to the academic essay in a livelier and more festive atmosphere than the regular academic season generally allows; a system of instruction involving 29 study units taught according to the principles of mastery learning; a course which teaches analytical thinking and which stresses one-to-one conferences, constant writing on topics that require emotional involvement, and a variety of in-class exercises that require active student participation; and a writing class which employs interviewing, coaching, dramatizing, and group writing in helping students to recreate that which was unique in the experiences they write about and to write with the reader in mind. (GW)