The relationship between writing skills development and cognitive development is the focus of numerous research studies and deserves significant consideration in curriculum planning. Writing development studies indicate that as children work through the various modes of discourse (argumentation, exposition, narration, and description), they exhibit differing levels of syntactic complexity in direct proportion to their real-life involvement. Similarly, cognitive studies demonstrate that intellectual development is a process of organizing and reorganizing cognitive structures. At different developmental stages, a child will use different levels of language skills. These changes occur as old cognitive operations are absorbed by newer, more complex ones. The practical application of these findings requires that the classroom teacher shift the emphasis in the teaching of writing from a product-oriented approach to one that encourages the development of current thinking processes. (MAI)