A study hypothesized that auditory input does not increase the comprehension of students. Forty Basic Skills English students in a suburban high school were identified for this study. They were grouped according to class section and assigned randomly to treatments. Two of the sections read narrative and persuasive/argument texts silently and were required to answer related main idea, detail and inference questions. The two remaining sections were read aloud to, using the same passages and the same questions. A comparison of the number of correct responses was then made between those students who were read aloud to and those who read to themselves to determine the level of comprehension of the students under each treatment. It was concluded that reading silently is more advantageous for secondary students than reading aloud to them. (Contains 36 references and a table of data; an appendix presents 4 practice tests and a table of raw data. (Author/RS)