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IN LITERATURE, THERE IS A TRADITION of glossing major texts for the purpose of explaining and clarifying their meanings for students and other readers. In the new literature on literacy, and especially in the case of such major works as Mina Shaughnessy's Errors and Expectations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), a gloss is no less in order, since even though Shaughnessy's book has great virtues, her perspective as a teacher dealing with has left lacunae in an otherwise fruitful approach to literacy. Recent research in psycholinguistics and can help to fill these gaps by making available the data of such research to help analyze and reduce errors, and by making possible an integrated treatment of the and processes as a unified set of literacy skills. The gloss on Shaughnessy's work provided here attempts to further her goals by bridging the present gap between and writing. Over the past two decades, national concern with literacy has shifted from why Johnny can't read, a phrase made popular in the title of a book by Rudolf Flesch (New York: Harper, 1955) to why Johnny can't uwrite, the title of a Newsweek cover story in December, 1975. Literacy is a matter of pressing concern at all levels of education, but especially at the college with the advent of open admissions at schools like the City University of New York where Shaughnessy works. Just as there were numerous answers to the reading there have already been numerous answers to the writing In the case of both and writing, the problems persist. The move now in both the public schools and colleges appears to be toward proficiency testing of literacy, which may measure, but will probably not solve, the problem. In reading, insights from linguistics and psycholinguistics suggest that there may not be a problem, or that, perhaps, the reading problem is not precisely where the educational establishment thinks it is. Much of the hue and cry has been that Johnny, a high school graduate, reads at fourth level. We know, however, thanks to the work of researchers like Kenneth Goodman and Daniel Fader1 that the grade level designations of ability are often based on tests which