A 40-item nonsense word list was administered to 27 first-graders who had been taught letter-sound correspondences in isolation. The results displayed a succession of stages through which subjects apparently passed. At the second stage, subjects could sound letters but not blend the sounds into words; at the third stage, subjects could sound some letters and blend them into a word; and at the fourth stage, the subjects pronounced most of the items at sight. The fourth stage subjects were significantly more accurate at pronouncing eleven predictable items, pronounced the entire list faster, and scored significantly higher on the reading subtest of the Metropolitan Achievement Test both one and two years later when compared with the third stage subjects. Subjects' overall speed on the list as a first- grader was a significant predictor of their rank on the Metropolitan Achievement Test in second grade and in third grade. The researcher feels that written language can be mapped onto spoken language, contrary to the view of some psycholinguists. (MKM)