Combining freshman composition and introduction to literature courses can make students active participants in what they read. In one course, students were instructed to read a literary work for a class. When the class met, the students were to write the name of the assigned story, the author, and anything they wanted to write about the story. Students wrote freely for 10 minutes, then were to write a summation sentence and participate in a discussion of what they had written. Following the next reading assignment, students were to write about the material at home, then in class, and a third time following a class discussion. By the third writing the students began to develop a fairly sophisticated understanding of what they had read. For subsequent reading assignments, students went through the three stages on their own. The technique aided understanding of the readings; some students reported that they were even applying the methods in other classes. (An appendix contains samples of writing on Cather and Hemingway stories from student notebooks.) (SG)