The gain in word analysis for elementary school students tutored in a perceptual-conditioning approach was reported. Subjects were 98 first graders, 41 fourth graders, and 16 fifth graders. The approach instructionally separated the teaching of decoding from the teaching of comprehension; only single whole words were used and always out of context. Paraprofessional tutors instructed individuals or small groups for approximately 15 minutes twice a day. The pupils were always told the sound of the word to prevent them from analyzing an unknown word by their own method. Pretest and post-test scores on the word-analysis section of the Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty indicated significant gain for all groups. The largest gain was found for grade-4 students, whose average gain was approximately 20 months for the 4-month experimental period. (CM)