This paper discusses the linguistic aspects of reading instruction in the elementary school language arts curriculum. The contents include: "Decoding vs. Comprehension," which discusses what constitutes reading comprehension, transformational theory of language, and grammatical knowledge the speaker of English possesses; "Syntactic Factors in Readability," which looks at the role syntax plays in processing information, the measurement of syntactic complexity, and how readability is affected by syntax; "Language Maturity and Reading Achievement," which discusses the importance of teachers understanding what language is, how teachers can judge the difficulty of sentences for young readers, and the acceleration of the development of syntactic mastery in children of low language ability; "Developing Awareness of Structural Resources," which discusses practices for developing students' awareness of syntactic clues to meaning; and "Summary." (WR)