Within the framework of a general model of communication, a model of language communication has been developed and applied to the perception of cohesion. To measure students' perception of textual cohesion, a pilot study in the United Kingdom built "noise" into texts by deleting parts of each texts. Subjects, 59 nonremedial students whose first language was either Italian or Punjabi, were given two test booklets in English, one fiction and one nonfiction. Each booklet contained 65 text deletions. Using an accepted guideline of miscue analysis, results did not indicate serious weaknesses in the students' reading at the points measured. Examining the measure of consensus displayed by students' responses leads to the intuitive conclusion that in these cases consensus measure is more important than exact match score. The results confirm that this type of analysis can provide potentially useful insights into readers' text processing strategies. (JL)