The nature of the relation between oral language knowledge and reading behavior has been a matter of empirical and pedagogical inquiry for some time. In recent years, old observations on postulated relations have re-emerged and been described by new terminology. The necessity of relating orthography to phonology, or letters to sounds, addressed some 50 years ago in the writings of Bloomfield ( 1933), has resurfaced over the past decade as the necessity of bringing to awareness the phonological categories represented by letter symbols (Mattingly 1972; 1979). The ability to use higher order linguistic knowledge in reading, so well de scribed by Huey (1908) some eighty years ago, has over the past decade been described in the works of Halliday and Hasan (1976), Anderson (1978), and Rumelhart (1976; 1980). Regardless of the particular position held regarding the "precise" nature of the relation, all past and present theorists claim a relation between oral language knowledge and reading. A question that logically arises from the claim that there is a relation between oral language and reading is: Do all children with reading problems have a language problem? The answer to this question, as re gards children in regular classes, appears to be "yes," except for that com paratively small percentage of children who may have a visual perceptual problem (Shankweiler and Liberman 1972). However, the nature of the language problem which is the presumed basis for the reading problem may vary among children. A partial rationale for this position is the variable nature of the language problems of children with clearly diagnosed language problems. Even though these children have been diagnosed as belonging to a particular population (for example, dys phasic, autistic, cerebral palsied, etc.), the language problems of children