Intended for use in curriculum planning, course development, and program evaluation, this report contains data from a study of the writing abilities of entering freshman students at the University of Texas at El Paso. The first chapter of the report provides background information concerning the need for systematic assessment of the writing abilities of entering freshman, the design of the study, the theoretical framework used in the study, and a description of the University's composition program. The second chapter details the study's methodology, specifically describing the instruments and writing tasks used, scoring procedures, and instructions to teachers. The five sections of the third chapter contain (1) background information on the subjects, including subjects' standardized reading and entrance test scores; (2) a discussion of responses to the survey questionnaire completed by all students enrolled in the Freshman Composition Program in Fall 1983; (3) a summary of students' composing processes on the writing tasks; (4) sample student essays, along with commentary explaining what is characteristic of papers at selected points in the continuum from poorest to best; and (5) reports on the surface features of a subsample of the essays. Sixty-four data tables are interspersed throughout the report. Appendixes contain copies of materials used in the study, including the survey questionnaire. (FL)