While placement procedures and lack of writing skills are certainly perplexing, classroom practices and procedures remain the most fundamental of challenges for the developmental writing instructor for good reason: time-on-task methods are the most direct means by which students improve skill levels. One instructor found that this approach to teaching writing had become inappropriate for students. Therefore the course was redesigned by employing more explicit teaching methods. It was feared that students in previous summer programs at the University of Dayton (Ohio) had lost sight of fundamental principles of writing because the instructor had de-emphasized the product of their writing and over-emphasized the process. For these students, constant feedback and reassurance that they were accomplishing goals was sometimes more important than the monitoring of writing stages. The fundamental design of the course became to augment writing strategies with goal-directed procedures. For example, when the exemplification essay was taught, the instructor emphasized throughout the unit what the students should accomplish and the strategies that typically support the goal. Less reliance was placed on their grasping the actual skills than on their clearly focusing on goals of that exemplification assignment. Central to this emphasis on teaching the formal features of a writing assignment is the sense that developmental students need to enter a comfort zone in which strategies, goals, and expectations are clearly expressed. (Contains 10 references.) (TB)