A study examined the effects of (1) providing students with instruction in a "discourse-structure" reading and writing strategy on college freshmen's recall and comprehension of history textbook passages; and (2) this procedure on the quality of students' expository writing. Subjects, 126 college freshmen, randomly assigned to one of three groups, received instruction and practice in the discourse structure summarization procedure (experimental condition), answered and discussed questions (conventional condition), or neither (control condition) after reading history texts. Analysis of results indicated that the summarization procedure reliably improved the recall of unfamiliar history text for students in the experimental condition when compared to the recall of students in the conventional or control conditions. Results further indicated that the writing of students in the experimental condition received reliably better ratings than did that of control students, though there was no reliable difference between the writing of students in the experimental and conventional conditions. The lack of a reliable difference in the writing of the experimental and conventional groups possibly reflected the overlap of instructional routines used in both groups. (JD)