Two considerations are brought to bear on the reading approach presented here. First, because the major focus in a teaching method designed for use with bilingual education students is to increase both language facility and reading ability, the approach is designed to provide the student with the opportunity to read, use, and listen to a standard language. Secondly, with a comprehensive focus integrating reading and language ability and providing means to achieve a sense of accomplishment, student achievement can be more easily monitored. Generally, bilingual students face difficulties in reading and language largely because of deficiency in general verbal ability, vocabulary, and sentence comprehension, and deficits in both native language and English. As one means of overcoming these difficulties, the imitative reading technique (IRT) was developed from principles of remediation and is presented as a three-step process to be used with both individuals and small groups: (1) Following a text with teacher or recording. (2) Read aloud with the model. (3) Read aloud independently. Tests were run on groups using the technique and on control groups; results indicated significant gains in students' sight vocabulary, reading vocabulary, and oral reading ability. (AMH)