This paper examines the relationship between strategies for recall of verbal material and the reading ability of 10-to-13-year-old children. Sixty-five fifth and sixth graders, whose reading levels were determined by the Gates-MacGinitie Comprehension Test (1964), were given an orally presented word-string repetition task. While performance on random strings reflects verbal memory span, semantic and syntactic regularities provide cues that can facilitate performance on the other string types. Since all strings would be equally difficult without knowledge of structural possibilities and permissible word combinations of English, the differences between string types measure the extent to which available linguistic information has been used. Data for all children show that random strings were hardest and meaningful strings were easiest. While all children made some use of linguistic structure in varying degrees, good readers' performances on structured strings surpassed that of poor readers. Only for good readers did random lists show the classic serial position pattern with recency and primacy effects. Poor readers show less differentiation in their handling of random and syntactically ordered strings and tend to approach both as serial lists. The developmental implications of these results are discussed with regard to reading processes and reading instruction. (Author/RL)