Undergraduate students of English for Science and Technology (EST) are confronted, in their English textbooks, with a variety of rhetorical forms intended to convey a variety of information, including specialized rhetorics of definition, classification, and argumentation. The rhetorical form of EST argumentation is the organization of written presentations in EST textbooks intending to support or invalidate hypotheses and theories through presentation of experimental evidence. The ability to understand literal meanings of sentences contained in these arguments is insufficient for the full comprehension of the arguments because of their frequently elliptical character. In addition, the skills needed to interpret elliptical EST arguments are very close to those required to interpret ordinary conversational English, and teaching reading comprehension of EST arguments amounts to teaching communicative competence in EST. (MSE)