A comparison of the difficulty in underlying structure of basal reading texts with the difficulty in surface structure raises questions on the validity of the Fry Readability Formula and other traditional readability formulas. (CJ)

This study questions the developmental nature of the ability to understand syntactic structures. An exploration is made of the possibility of learning more about reading comprehension and readability by examining responses made to sentences described by transformational grammarians as structurally ambiguous. A group of fifth grade students were…