A study was conceived to develop, implement, and evaluate the Structural-Response Instructional Model for increasing reading/thinking skills through written responses to a text's macrostructure. The study sought to determine: (1) if writing activities increased students' reading comprehension, (2) if the model effectively increased reading comprehension, and (3) if this model effectively increased inferential comprehension. Subjects, 81 students in three remedial reading classes at a Florida junior college, were randomly assigned to a reading-only group, to a group writing opinion responses, or to a group writing structural responses. At the end of 15 weeks, reading comprehension was assessed using the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test. Results indicated significant differences between groups in total and inferential comprehension. A subsequent comparison of the structural-response group with the opinion-response group confirmed that writing structural responses enabled more students to reach higher levels of inferential comprehension--73% of these students achieved 80% accuracy. The results suggest that the Structural-Response Instructional Model is a pragmatic way to use writing to increase students' understanding of written discourse as well as to increase their reasoning skills. Based on the results, it was recommended that the Structural-Response Instructional Model be incorporated into the college's reading program. (An extensive bibliography is appended.) (NKA)