The purpose of this study was to develop the functional composition writing skills for the first secondary students in the Sultanate of Oman. More specifically the study attempted to answer the following questions: 1. What are the categories of functional composition writing that are required for the first secondary students in the Sultanate? 2. What are the five most important functional composition writing categories for the first secondary students? 3. What are the specific skills for these five categories? 4. What is the proposed program for developing the specific skills of the five categories for the first secondary students? 5. What is the effect of teaching the proposed program on the first secondary students functional composition writing? The population of the study was all the male first secondary students in the puplic school in Muscat school District in the 1994 1995 academic year. The sample of the study was made up of (121) students. (67) were in the experimental group and (54) were in the control group. Two teachers, who were matched on education and the number of years of experience, were selected to teach the subjects of the study. To answer the questions of the study the researcher constructed a list of the functional composition categories which are required for the first secondary students. The list was given to specialized faculty members at Sultan Qaboos University, Arabic teachers and supervisors in the secondary schools as well as the students to rate its categories. The five most highly categories and their frequencies were: personal correspondence (79.32%), posters(79.13%), diaries(77.63%), summaries (77.44%), and official correspondence (76.12%. (On the basis of this finding the researcher prepared a list of the specific skills for these five categories and submitted it to a panel of judges for modification and approval. This list was used in constructing the proposed program for developing the specific skills of the five categories. This too was submitted to a panel of judges for modifications and approval. To evaluate the effect of the program on the students' achievement the researcher developed six tests. Five of the tests were essay type to evaluate the students' performance in the five categories. The sixth was an objective test to evaluate the students' knowledge and comprehension of the five categories. The validity of the tests was established by a panel of judges. The reliability of the tests was calculated using the test - retest method (pearson r = 0.86). (The six tests were administrated to both groups before and after the administration of the program. The t-test was used for the purposes of the statistical analysis of the data. The important results were: 1. There were statistically significant differences (p>0.01) between the mean scores of the subjects in the experimental group on the test of functional composition writing in favor of the post-test. 2. There were statistically significant differences (p>0.01 (between the mean scores of the experimental group and those of the control group on the post-test in favor of the experimental group. The researcher attributed the improvement in performance of the subjects in the experimental group to the proposed program. On the basis of this conclusion, the researcher recommended the following: 1. Developing the teaching of composition writing by the means of proposed programs which are specifically planned on the basis of the skills to be developed. 2. Training the teachers on the basic and specific skills of composition writing. 3. Connecting the composition writing with the other language arts, and the extracurricular activities. 4. Undertaking more research on composition writing