An alternative curriculum for Freshman Composition, designed to help students develop cognitive skills useful for academic writing in other courses, involves eight discipline-specific assignments, building from relatively simple writing tasks such as taking lecture notes and keeping an academic journal, through book reports, essay examinations, and critiques. Eight discrete writing assignments are arranged in an increasingly difficult sequence on the assumptions that most academic writing is in response to reading; that the more rigorous the reading, the better the writing; and that the best reading occurs when there is a strong personal engagement with the text. For all sections, the first essay is diagnostic, while the last essay is a final exam. Assumptions in planning the curriculum were as follows: (1) writing takes a variety of forms; (2) writing must address a variety of audiences; (3) writing is a process; and (4) writing is thinking. (Six references are included.) (JK)