By the 1980s, the whole language philosophy (Goodman, 1986), based on the idea that reading and writing should be done for authentic purposes, gained credibility. As the movement gained momentum, more teachers began to adopt the student-centered writing workshop as a way of teaching writing. A study of a class of 27 culturally diverse third graders in a school in Downey, California, investigated the cognitive and affective implications of the student-centered writing workshop approach. The study, which took place over a 5-week period, used a one-group pretest-posttest design. Students completed the same questionnaire and a writing sample on two different occasions. Following the pretest measures, a writing workshop, based on models by Donald Graves (1983), Lucy Calkins (1986), and Nancie Atwell (1986), was conducted daily. Results showed that more students reported a positive attitude towards writing after the treatment. The percentage of students reporting that they liked to write increased from 48 to 78. Also, the percentage of students who preferred to choose their own topic increased from 52 to 63. Writing tests showed moderate improvement: 41% scored a three or four (four being the highest) on the posttest as opposed to 19% on the pretest. (Four tables of data are included. Appendixes contain affective and cognitive tests, scoring results, and selected student writing samples.) (TB)