Indonesia's efforts to develop new texts and revise the syllabus for English as a second language have included writing the texts with a communicative orientation but with a prominent structural component. Bahasa Indonesia is used to guarantee that the students understand the meaning of all the structures and forms as well as their functions in communication, since meaningfulness is an essential feature of the new syllabus. Because the students have already been taught the reading comprehension skill in their native language, there is no need to duplicate this effort except where there are differences in communicative strategies between the native language and English. The committee's conclusion is that the main objective of the reading lesson is to teach new language features in natural discourse. Therefore, the topic of the reading lesson should be made familiar to the students, and any other learning obtained from the lesson is to be considered a contingent gain. (MSE)