Words were used as the stimulus factors to test the two-stage reading process. The first stage is a decoding stage in which the words are perceived and translated into an acoustic code, and the second stage is a semantic matching stage in which words were categorized into three phonological factors (word length, vowel complexity, and regularity) affecting only the decoding stage and two semantic component factors (word familiarity and concreteness) expected to affect the semantic matching stage only. An experimental session consisted of 6 blocks, 96 words altogether. Each block had two phases, a prefamiliarization or training phase followed by a test phase. Experiment 1, using second and fifth grade children, showed pictures and words; experiment 2, using first and third grade children, varied the sentences that were read and the amount of pronunciation practice. Results indicated that the phonological prefamiliarization and word factors affected decoding but not semantic matching and that the semantic prefamiliarization factors affected semantic matching but not decoding. However, the semantic word factors affected both decoding and semantic matching, possibly as a result of final consonants and consonant clusters confounding semantic factors. (HOD)