This study investigated whether seventh- and ninth-grade students who did prewriting activities in English class preceding a related literature comprehension test would produce higher raw test scores on literal and interpretive questions than would students who did not use prewriting. The study took place in 1993 and 1995. Participants included two each of average seventh- and ninth-grade English classes. Intervention group students participated in a prewriting activity prior to the literature comprehension test. The activity involved writing about personal knowledge, experience, or emotion related to the story. Control group students did not participate in prewriting. Students in both groups read the same story and had the same test questions. Data analysis indicated a majority of higher scores for all four ninth-grade experimental groups in nearly every itemized comparison with the control groups. However, for the seventh grade, the same indications were not as evident. In some comparisons, the seventh-grade control groups outperformed the experimental groups. However, in general, prewriting increased students' performance on reading comprehension tests, even when students in one of the intervention group initially had lower overall grade point averages than did students in the corresponding control group. (SM)