Designed to assess a reader's comprehension of items differing in contrastive vocal stress, this test consists of 64 items divided evenly between eight sentence types: declarative active, declarative passive, interrogative, and imperative, with each in a positive and negative form. The element of contrastive stress is placed on nouns functioning as subject; verbs as main predicate; nouns as objects of prepositions; nouns as direct objects; adjectives; and adverbs of time, place, and manner. Subjects listen to a question followed by a sentence repeated three times with the element of contrastive vocal stress being placed on a different word in each sentence to produce alternative meanings. Subjects then select the best rendition of the sentence to answer the initial question. Validity, reliability, and normative data are included. (This document is one of those reviewed in The Research Instruments Project (TRIP) monograph "Measures for Research and Evaluation in the English Language Arts, Volume 2," published by the Committee on Research of the National Council of Teachers of English in cooperation with the ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills. The TRIP review, included here as an introduction to the instrument, describes the instrument's category (reading), title, author, date, age range (upper elementary), purpose, and physical characteristics.) (HTH)