Developed in response to the heterogeneous student population of a two-year, open door college, a self-paced freshman English course at Brazosport College (Texas) still operates within the traditional contact hour and three semester hours credit requirements, but serves students in unique, individual ways. Students may enroll only if placed by diagnostic writing and grammar tests. They spend one to three hours a week in an instructional resource center with individual study carrels where they may listen to taped lectures that accompany the texts, all of which are prepared by the English faculty. Students must also spend two hours weekly in a writing laboratory, which is a conventional classroom where a teacher works with 15 students or less. They are also required to complete weekly self-instruction units in grammar and to take departmental rhetoric exams and a final. The final provides a link to the following semester by combining objective questions on rhetoric with essay questions on an assigned literary work. Final grades are assigned on the basis of predetermined criteria. Additionally, later grades are weighed more heavily if a student raises his level of performance. Consistency in evaluation, as well as consistency in instructional materials and writing assignments, is therefore maintained while still allowing instructors to grade on improvement. (CRH)