This study way designed to examine the effectivenessrnof oral preparation as compared with the incidental methodrnof teaching the writing skill. Two groups of freshmen inrnthe Departments of Chemistry and Statistics (Addis AbabarnUniversity) were randomly selected and taught Personalrnletter writing and Report writing techniques.rnThe students in the former department were dividedrninto smaller conversational units and did all the writingrnassignments in groups. The other group of freshmanrnstudents carried out the tasks individually as practisedrnin Freshman English courses.rnAfter each mode of writing had been practised forrntwo weeks, 8 composition test was administered to thernsubjects in identical situations for both groups. Thernwriting samples were then analysed and compared in terms ofrnthe mean -T-unit length index which is recognised as arnvalid measure of syntactic maturity.rnThe results indicated that the learners in the studyrngroup were producing T-uhits which were consistently, butrnnot markedly longer than those written by the members ofrnthe control group.rnThe data further ahowed that the average mean T-unitrnlength output of the freshman students whose writings werernconsidered in this study was exteremly low by both nativernand ESL standards. In the literature, for example, the meanrnT-unit length produced by a typical fourth grade writer onrna free writing task was reported as 11.3 words, while thernscore for the freshmen sampled in the present study wasrngenerally below 11 words per T-unit.rnTechniques of teaching which were established inrnresearch as the most effective procedures for enhancing thernsyntactic fluency of writers have been suggested as possiblernsolutions.