A training study, consisting of three treatment cycles for a total of nine 50-minute class sessions, was conducted to determine the combined effect of directed reading-thinking activity (DRTA) and conceptual mapping as organizational strategies for college freshmen of low writing ability. Each cycle included DRTA instruction, mapping, discussion, and the writing of an essay based on an expository text. Students in the control group read the same assignments and wrote essays on the same topics under the same time restrictions, but did not have DRTA or mapping instruction. Rather, the control students were taught brain storming and clustering of ideas as a planning technique for writing. Results revealed that the experimental students used significantly more main ideas in their essays than did control students, but that the experimental group of poor ability writers used slightly fewer subordinate ideas than did control group students. The findings suggest that conceptual mapping and DRTA helped students recall ideas needed during the planning and writing of thesis-support and summary-analysis writing tasks. (HOD)