This in-process report discusses the writing development of a student from first grade through mid-eighth grade. An analysis of the student's T-unit length averages from third grade to mid-eighth grade reveals a leap of syntactic complexity from the fifth to the sixth grade. Among the other findings are the following: two modes of writing--narration and exposition--dominate the student's writings, suggesting that restrictions may be placed on students' potential when they are limited to only a couple of modes; the student's progress may be more directly related to experiences with a few good teachers than to textbooks or curriculum; analysis of the use of conjoining elements as T-unit openers reveals very little about the student's writing skills; and writing maturity at the middle school years and beyond may not lend itself to investigations via clause expansion--as was done in the early T-unit studies--but rather to investigations via verb phrase expansion. (GW)