This study is an investigation of the achievement and growth in certain English skills of students during the first half of their attendance in a Washington, D. C, senior high school, situated in a socially and eco nomically favorable environment. Limitation of the investigation to certain areas of Eng lish skills made it possible to obtain specific data in these areas. However, the findings should be viewed by curriculum workers in relation to the entire field of instruction in English. Deficiencies in these skills may be compensated by achievement in other areas. The aim of this study was to provide objec tive data for possible use, if it is deemed that a high degree of proficiency in such skills should be an outcome of secondary education in this school or a comparable one. The method used was the test and re-test technique, and the examination of errors by item analysis. All classes in the semesters of English that were tested were involved in the study, not just the classes of one or two teachers. It is important to remember this, because the use of all classes provided a measure of educational progress under typical conditions, with teachers following the same course of study, but varying their methods according to the patterns they have developed from their own experience. In other words, the investigator was concerned with happens in a large urban high school in a good community, with a faculty representative of such institutions as this high school, under the usual procedures in the classroom. The term, basic language skills in Eng lish, in this study refers to the ability to give the correct answers on test items in the areas of punctuation, capitalization, usage, and spelling. Primarily, then, this study was concerned with the what of learning in these areas of English skills, not with the how or methods of instruction. Not all areas of learning lend themselves so readily to measurements of progress; it is for this reason, rather than that skills are considered the only or most important of educational outcomes, that this detailed examination of conditions was made.