Oral production (the speech act) and the comprehension of written and oral texts have long been treated as separate entities when they could be used in an integrated approach to teach a broader range of language skills. The receptive aspects of the speech act should be brought into language instruction and used to select materials for teaching comprehension. Comprehension materials are categorized as simpler or more-advanced based on their degree of artificiality or authenticity, which is largely a function of the instructional intent. Simpler materials are used to facilitate the transfer from receptive to productive skills, while more advanced materials are intended for content study, and the ties to language learning are less direct. With simpler materials the instructional focus can be on the detection and examination of speech acts and their realization in language. With more advanced materials, the initiative for analysis can be left more to the student, and the teacher can take advantage of the inherent value of the content to demonstrate how the linguistic forms and their usage serve the author's or speaker's objectives. The student can also become aware of what characterizes certain kinds of texts, make comparisons with native language texts, and perform a variety of other analytical exercises. A number of texts illustrating the method are appended. (MSE)