The two-year college system operates primarily under an open-door admission policy which admits many students who are academically deficient in their writing skills. To meet the needs of these students, many colleges have designed and implemented developmental English courses which, unfortunately, have not always shown a high degree of success. Many studies have been made to identify characteristics of the developmental student, but research is limited in the area of competencies needed by those who instruct students taking developmental writing courses.

It was the purpose of this study to identify these competencies, and the method chosen to do this was the Delphi Technique. A panel of fifty-three experts listed what they perceived to be needed competencies for teaching developmental composition. They listed forty-two competencies which were itemized into three categories: rhetorical, pedagogical, and human interaction. The panel members then rated these according to their perceived importance. The investigator ranked them in order of importance by using a weighted score.