A study was designed to assess the effect of text format on the decoding and comprehension proficiency of third and fifth grade students. Subjects were 36 students at each grade level who completed a battery of comprehension and decoding measures and then read a set of four stories that had been especially constructed for the study. Each story represented one of four formats: (1) whole sentence, (2) single words, (3) phrasal units, and (4) fragmented groups. Each subject read the first story in the set aloud without answering comprehension questions, then read the remaining three stories silently, answering four questions after each. The findings showed that compared to the other text formats, the phrasal text led to slight improvements in reading comprehension. This format also improved oral reading performance, at least for moderately poor readers. (Materials used in the study are appended.) (FL)