This study is the sixth 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 report provides an in-depth look at how students use elaboration (bringing prior knowledge to a task), how much value elaborative material adds, and how the material generated via elaboration during reading affects the essays students write. Subjects, 17 college freshmen enrolled in a freshman composition course, wrote an essay about time management, had their think-aloud protocols recorded, and were interviewed. Results indicated that the subjects elaborated abundantly as they read, selecting or discarding source text ideas, forging connections between previously disparate concepts, and creating hierarchies of importance. Results also indicated that while elaborative material in the form of ideas and examples rarely transferred directly into the students' own texts, elaboration had an important indirect influence, shaping the content and structure of the essays in a number of ways. (The Reading-to-Write study reference list is attached.) (RS)