A study investigated the impact of task definition on students' revising strategies to determine whether college freshman writers could revise globally if instructed to do so and if those global revisions would result in improved texts. Data were elicited from 38 students enrolled in two entry-level college writing courses. Participants, randomly assigned into two groups, were asked to revise a text evidencing both global problems such as poor organization and poor adaption to audience concerns and local problems such as errors in spelling, punctuation, diction, and agreement. One group was given eight minutes of instruction on how to revise globally, and the other was simply asked to make the text better. Results revealed that the texts written by students who received the instruction were significantly better in quality and included significantly more global revision. Results also revealed that the improvement affected the treated population generally rather than just a small part of that population. Findings suggest that the change in task definition allowed students to tap revision skills that they already had available. (Two figures of data are included; two appendixes containing the text and directions used for revision are attached.) (KEH)