In order to determine the effectiveness of the tutorial method of individual conferences for communicating students' strengths and weaknesses in writing skills compared to the traditional method of returning correction-marked papers with only written comments on them, two experiments were conducted in which an experimental group and a control group at each of two colleges received identical instruction and wrote eight in-class essays which were graded on the basis of content, organization, mechanics, and syntax and diction. The experimental groups received feedback through conferencing while the control groups received feedback through written comments. The treatment of the experimental groups differed only in that one had three fifty-minute class meetings per week and had short conferences while the other group had one three-hour meeting per week and thus longer conferences were possible. Analysis of individual and mean group achievement showed that students who received feedback via conferencing had greater achievement gains than did students in the control group, although the gains were statistically significant only for one of the experimental groups. It was recommended that the conferencing method be employed in the teaching of composition. (JDS)