The purpose of this study was to compare the word processing and reading comprehension skilled in and less skilled readers. Forty-nine, 2nd graders (26 skilled and 23 less skilled readers) participated in this study. They were tested with two experiments assessing their processing of isolated real word and pseudoword pairs as well as their reading comprehension skills. Findings suggest that there is a significant difference between skilled and less skilled readers both with regard to their word processing skills and their reading comprehension skills. In addition, findings suggest that word processing skills and reading comprehension skills correlate positively both skilled and less skilled readers.