The processing that integrates the meanings of individual words to form a representation of sentence meaning begins at those points in a sentence where the structural relationships can be identified. (Editor)

Two research areas, schema theory and linguistic theory, are described which have contributed to theories about language comprehension. Models of language comprehension conceptualized by Roger Schank, Carl Frederiksen, and Walter Kintsch are discussed in relation to the research and evaluated for practical use in reading instruction. (Author/PP)