A study analyzed think-aloud protocols to investigate and describe what readers who are developing proficiency do as they read. Subjects, three sixth-grade middle-school boys (with grade point averages of 3.0-3.5 on a 4-point scale) from a small West Virginia suburb, read aloud 16 text sections (from one to four sentences in length), thought aloud at the end of each section, and summarized the main points of the text after reading and thinking aloud. The think-aloud protocols were transcribed and segmented into reader-text interactions. Results indicated that: (1) John's predominant interaction with text was elaboration through recall of prior knowledge or experiences; (2) more than half of Curtis' interactions include question or question-related statements; and (3) Ben's verbal reports are quite sparse--all of his responses took the form of one-line statements. Findings suggest that all three subjects demonstrated individual and characteristic patterns of processing within a single text. Findings also suggest that thinking aloud can become an important aspect of learning environments that direct students to attend to the meaning or content of the text without instruction in specific skills by providing a way for both teachers and students to uncover cognitive processes in reading and by providing a context and a vocabulary for a meaningful instructional dialogue about those processes. (Four tables of data are included; 47 references and the think-aloud protocol are attached.) (RS)