A study compared the number of word definitions retained by students who looked up words and wrote down definitions to the number of words retained by students who had the stories and definitions read aloud to them. Subjects, 20 boys and 20 girls in a Florida school, reading on the fifth grade level, were randomly divided into control and experimental groups. The control group looked at vocabulary words from a basal reading selection in the dictionary and wrote out the definitions on paper. The experimental group had the selection read to them by the teacher who then asked for a definition of the same words as they were encountered in the selection. A correct definition was either solicited from the students or provided by the teacher. At the conclusion of an 8-week treatment period, scores from weekly vocabulary tests for each student in the two groups were compared. Results indicated that members of the control group retained less than half of the vocabulary words while the members of the experimental group retained more than 90% of the words. Findings suggest that school systems should foster reading programs that incorporate time for reading aloud to students. (A figure presenting the experimental design and a table of data are included; 14 references, an appendix of data, and a proposal for a magazine article based on the study are attached.) (RS)