Keeping vocabulary and content constant, it was determined whether syntactically more complex structures increase reading difficulty or whether all students, regardless of grade level, have the same syntactic skills and thus read with equal facility materials written at different syntactic maturity levels. One hundred and twenty randomly selected students from grades 4 through 12 in a Florida school system were the subjects. They were given prototypic passages about the making of aluminum as rewritten by typical fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders and skilled adults, exhibiting syntactic characteristics of the average performance at each age level. Every fifth word was deleted, and no paragraphs contained the first or last words deleted. The test was given without verbal instructions or assistance, and no time limit was set. Data were subjected to one-way analysis of variance. The results showed that grades 4, 10, and 11 differed significantly between the four levels of writing. Fourth, fifth, and sixth graders read fourth-grade writing best; eleventh graders read it with least facility. Students in grades 8 through 12 found eighth-grade writing easier to read than either the fourth-grade writing or the more difficult passages. References, tables, and the prototype passages are included. (Author/CL)