This study is the fifth in a series of reports from the Reading-to-Write Project, a collaborative study of students' cognitive processes at one critical point of entry into academic performance. This part of the study examines the ways in which college students interpret and negotiate an assignment that calls for reading to write. Subjects, 17 freshmen and 19 junior and senior writing majors and graduate students, thought aloud from the time they began reading the instructions for the task through completion of a first draft. Results indicated that while the subjects varied in age and writing experience, their protocols shared these features: (1) students read through the instructions and source text a first time, making minimal, brief comments; (2) the students reread the text and made longer, more substantive comments; (3) students then engaged in planning their paper by making brief outlines or searching for an organizing idea; and (4) students began to write their papers, either from notes or referring back to the text, or both. (A figure is included and the Reading-to-Write study list of of references and four appendixes of data are attached.) (RS)