This study examines whether different methods of teaching a foreign language would have an effect 011 text comprehension in that language. The participants were thirty students, Portuguese native speakers, aged 12-14. Half of them attended schools that adopted the Communicative Approach and the other half attended schools that adopted the Áudiolingual Approach. Text comprehension abilities, in Portuguese and in English, were evaluated in two tasks: reproduction of a text and questions about a text. Although all the students showed similar levels of comprehension when reading Portuguese texts, when it came to understanding English texts, the students in the Áudiolingual Approach program showed more elem entary levels of com prehension than those in the Communicative Approach program.