The effectiveness of an undergraduate program in elementary school reading methods, designed to train the prospective teacher to determine learner achievement in word recognition, comprehension, and rate and study was investigated. Student teachers participated in simulated teaching experiences through self-correctional workbooks and, in the first two reading areas, through viewing video tapes of children reading. Each student teacher was then requested to write an informal test which would measure pupil attainment of a specific reading objective and fulfill three criteria: it would require a pupil response, would describe an adequate response, and would resemble the three reading categories as defined by the investigators. The same 20 tests were graded by four investigators to improve reliability. Each program part or reading area was administered in sequence and had four treatment groups: pretest-program-posttest (A), pretest-posttest (B), program-posttest (C), and posttest (D). It was found that treatments A and C were superior to B and D, but that A was not significantly different from C nor B from D. All three parts of the instructional program had a significant effect on the student teachers. (LP)