The purpose of this study was to determine what effects the Christensen Rhetoric Program, a method of teaching sentence and paragraph development, had upon the attitudes of 43 black college freshmen just entering Tennessee State University and upon the persistence of these students in using free modifiers after a lapse of time and instruction. Analysis of the data led to the following conclusions about this writing program: (1) the program had no positive influence on the attitudes of the students toward written composition; (2) the program effectively taught these students to use free modifiers to expand their ideas in sentences and paragraphs; (3) these students continued to expand their sentences in this manner after leaving the instruction; (4) sentences written by students in this program were superior to those written by students taught in the traditional way when compared on the criteria of total number of free modifiers, number of initial free modifiers, number of medial free modifiers, and number of final free modifiers; and (5) students can be taught to manipulate free modifiers like the professional writer as described by Christensen. (Author/DI)