Readiness is not all-or-none. It depends on the method and materials to be used and on the level at which instruction will begin. Maturation, heredity, and experience influences readiness, and most 6-year-olds are ready to learn something about reading. Readiness research should attempt to find what and how a child is ready to learn rather than whether he is ready to learn to read. Recommendations for improved research caution against interpreting the findings of readiness studies when the teaching method and materials are not specified, particularly when the sample is small. Researchers should avoid making misleading retrospective inferences about readiness, especially in the case of inferences of no relationship. Finally, one should not make the following faulty interpretations of correlational relationships: (1) assuming that correlational differences due to individual test suitability differences or to test reliability differences imply differences in the relationship of the underlying variables; (2) neglecting to analyze the nature of various readiness tasks and to use this information in future research regardless of the names presently given to the tasks; and (3) overlooking the importance of sampling error in multivariate analyses. References are included. (BS)