Thirty-eight sixth grade students (20 good and 18 poor readers) were involved in a study that examined comprehension under oral and written modes of presentation and across four expository texts that had been prepared at two levels of difficulty (easy and hard). All subjects listened to and read the texts in a counterbalanced order and afterwards were asked to retell what they had heard or read. They also completed a multiple choice test. The results revealed that significant differences in the listening mode did not exist between good and poor readers. In fact, the poor readers did better than the good readers in the free recall of literal ideas in the oral mode of presentation. However, in the reading mode of presentation, the good readers were superior in comprehension on both easy and hard texts. (FL)