Drawn from a symposium presented at the 1979 National Reading Conference, the four papers in this collection describe a notion of conceptual readability, an approach contrasting with traditional readability computations (number of words per sentence and degree of familiarity of individual words) and focusing on the concepts communicated by the text (how arguments are presented, what place examples play in an exposition, how characters' interactions are developed and described). The first paper demonstrates how certain uses of traditional readability formulas may actually lead to more difficult texts. The second paper presents a model with which to examine conflict in stories and discusses the application of this model to children's literature to expand students' understanding of what they read. The third paper describes a method of mapping the structure of expository texts and discusses its possible uses as a measure of text comprehensibility. The final paper suggests an educational method that encourages children to focus on the conceptual level of text in their early reading and writing experiences. (RL)