Abstract
In a small, private college in the Southwest, underprepared college freshmen in one basic skills English class participated in a projected in which selected short stories, essays, and poems were read aloud to the class while the students followed along with text in hand. Pre‐ and post‐test semester reading scores did not indicate as much gain as the staff had hoped, but excellent gains at the discourse and paragraph levels were achieved in final essays when compared to the students' initial essay production.