During one term at a laboratory school, reading was systematically deleted from activites in one secondary level class and replaced with film, lecture, oral reading, slides, and other audiovisual aids. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test served as pretest-posttest for the twelve-week experiment, with 19 of 25 students completing both tests. The results were confusing, since higher vocabulary scores did not always signal progress in grade level, and since not all comprehension scores were high enough to compute their grade equivalents. Some of the inferences made from the data include the following: the "literature without reading" class did not affect students' vocabulary skills significantly; comprehension skills were enhanced when printed (reading) material was used for instruction; some learning styles appear to be oriented toward audiovisual rather than reading materials; students who are used to learning from the printed page may not be prepared to transfer to other formats; the six students with insufficient skills for converting their reading scores to grade equivalents made significant gains in overall reading, suggesting that their past experiences may have increased thier adaptability to new contexts; many students did not take learning in the nonreading mode seriously; and the questionable quality of much commercial television may have tainted teachers' judgments about the efficacy of audiovisual learning. (The daily outline for the course is included.) (RL)