Two main points should be noted concerning strategies recommended for teaching basic writing students. First, teachers can develop only those strategies that are consonant with their own personalities and that will enable students to develop their own writing strategies. Second, whatever strategies are selected should lead students beyond the confines of the basic writing class to help them improve their odds for survival in college long enough so that they can make an intelligent decision about whether they belong in college. These points do not contradict one another because all teachers of basic writing have successfully developed strategies that enabled them to succeed in college, and it is those strategies that everyone should consider when teaching basic writing classes. Sharing personal strategies for coping in the academic culture should help students to discover their own. However, students must (1) master the skills of investigating, perceiving, inferring, abstracting, generalizing, using details to support observation, synthesizing, analyzing, and criticizing; and (2) begin learning them during their first basic writing course if they are to advance in their college careers. (DF)