Research on children's oral reading errors provides evidence that both top down and bottom up processes interactively contribute to reading. Syntactic and semantic expectations are sources of information for top down processing, while knowledge of letter-sound relations provides information for bottom up processing. As children learn to read, interaction between top down and bottom up processing becomes more frequent. Since word recognition becomes automatic as readers progress, how rapidly children can read familiar words is an important factor in text reading, distinguishing between skilled and poor readers. Different explanations have been proposed for how children store spellings in memory; most likely spelling is a symbol linking visual representation to a word's pronunciation. Both flashcards and meaningful text help children with some aspects of word learning, but neither method is adequate for acquiring complete word knowledge. Although these ideas on reading have experimental support, many questions about reading comprehension, reading readiness, and the actual classroom practice of the teaching of reading remain to be answered. (JL)