This paper examines the written English of Chicano freshman composition students and presents a contrastive analysis of the written English of the hypothetical college freshman, which approximates "standard" English, and the written English of 93 Chicano freshmen. Discussion focuses on various linguistic differences, classified in the following groups: prepositions, articles, conjunctions, adjectives, nouns and pronouns, verbs, possessives, noun complements, plural words, number agreement, idiom, diction, morphology, and syntax. The paper concludes that many of the differences in English usage are not errors in language comprehension; teachers should help Chicano students realize that standard English need not entirely replace their dialect but that using standard English may prove helpful in situations other than freshman English class; and teachers and English departments should seriously question the goals and methods of freshman English courses. (JM)