Doubts about the reading vocabulary adequacies of today's high school graduates led to an experiment with a list of 199 difficult words culled from the "Reader's Digest." College juniors and seniors (298 in the first stage and 388 in the second stage) were asked to indicate whether they knew the pronunciation and the meaning of the selected words. Next the students were directed to write the definition, write a description, or use in context words selected in a random pattern from those they had checked as knowing the meaning. Then the students were tested orally on both the pronunciation and the meaning. Because the initial results were quite low, a second study (an exact replication of the first) was conducted later. Second study results confirmed the outcome of the earlier study. Causes of the poor showing seem to be overreliance on context for the meaning of words, focus of phonic programs on pronunciation to the neglect of meaning, and the fact that comprehension is not emphasized and not really valued in early reading programs. (NKA)