The relation between reading comprehension and linguistic awareness is discussed in terms of a set of processing skills common to both these activities. Two metalinguistic skill components are identified and examined for their relative contribution to reading comprehension. The general hypothesis is that these skill components explain a significant portion of the variance in reading comprehension. The two skill components are operationalized in terms of a battery of metalinguistic tasks, each of which is claimed (by means of task analysis) to rely primarily on one or the other processing component for its solution. A study is reported in which 8-year-old children are tested with these metalinguistic tasks, general measures of intelligence, and a test of reading comprehension. The results show that the relation among performance on the metalinguistic tasks is strongest for those tasks relying on the same processing skill component and that one of these components is most significant in determining the child's level of reading comprehension. These findings are interpreted in terms of the underlying linguistic processes involved in reading.
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