The need for finding methods of assessing reading comprehension deficits was the impetus for this study. Specifically, the goal was to determine whether an experimental test of listening and reading, the sentence verification technique, would distinguish seventh-grade good and poor comprehenders as effectively as a standardized comprehension test. The findings shewed that the poor comprehenders' performances on subtests of the experimental test were significantly below those of good comprehenders. The experimental test classified correctly 94.6% of the good and poor comprehenders, and was similar to the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests in the ability to discriminate good and poor comprehenders. Analyses of errors on the four types of test sentences and of performances of selected poor comprehenders suggest that this method of assessing comprehension skills has diagnostic potential.
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