ABSTRACTHalliday and Hasan's (1976) concept of textual cohesion has generated considerable interest among reading educators. However, there has been very little research which has considered how cohesion operates during reading. This paper reports on a study which used a selective deletion procedure to investigate how good and poor readers (N = 44) from a secondary school in England were able to use cohesion while reading fiction and non‐fiction. A feature of the analysis of the results thus obtained is the validation of the concept of a reading development continuum (RDC). Results indicate that good readers were more successful in maintaining the global unity of text than were the poor readers. As well, both groups of readers found it easier to perceive cohesion in fiction than they did in non‐fiction. Implications of these findings for reading instruction at the elementary and secondary levels are discus