Reading teachers should choose activities and experiences for the classroom that are central to reading. Although a sense of security surrounds the teaching of testable finite reading skills, it is necessary to choose language arts experiences that are not so readily evaluated but still are basic to reading. Listening instruction can facilitate reading improvement; this includes analyzing the listening environments of classrooms, helping children develop the ability to discriminate messages from background noise, and planning experiences in which students listen for sequence, anticipate the speaker, determine meanings, and evaluate the message. Oral language instruction should teach subskills in the following ways: develop syntactic skills by providing experiences in combining, expanding, and transforming sentences; help children enrich their vocabularies; teach the use of stress, pitch, and juncture; and provide instruction in the use of kinesics, proxemics, and haptics in oral communication. Dramatics and exposure to literature have much to offer in enhancing reading instruction; and composition activities, including writing and group editing, help children clarify and shape their thinking abilities and yield insight into the nature of the writing process. (DF)