A 1982 study assessed the comparative reading comprehension levels and writing ability performance of Trades Certification Board (TCB) apprentices in five trades in New Zealand. Test data were collected for 1,389 apprentices and a comparison group of 361 secondary school students. The cloze procedure format was adopted for assessing apprentices' ability to gain information from both general reading material and trade reading material. Overall, for all trades except hairdressing, the ability of apprentices to read extracts from their respective trade materials was lower than their ability to tackle general reading materials. The electrical, farming, and auto engineering course trade materials had significantly lower readability than meat retailing materials, which had significantly lower readability than hairdressing materials. Reading and writing abilities were moderately related. A readability analysis of the 1982 First Qualifying TCB examination papers used comparable samples of 149 apprentices selected from the 1983 intakes. The cloze format was again used. Auto engineering and meat retailing groups had trouble reading their examination papers independently. Examination papers appeared to be very similar in readability, but in practice this penalized some groups. The report includes 43 references and appendixes containing study materials, including information on the cloze procedure and sample cloze tests. (YLB)