An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of a reading format with “whispering -to-oneself” (Tanaka, 1983) on children's text comprehension. In this format, subjects were asked to read a text in a whisper and to narrate ideas which occurred to them during the reading. Both oral and silent reading formats were used as control conditions. Ninety-one 6th grade children were assigned to one of the three formats. Three aspects of the children's text comprehension were measured as dependent variables: text memory both on the literal level and on the phonological level, and text processing on the semantic level. Analysis of covariance, where the score of the Japanese language test was a covariate, was performed. Results showed the dominance of the “whispering-to-oneself” format over the other two in the phonological memory of the text, but not in the semantic processipg. These results were discussed in terms of setting of reading goal and distribution of processing resources in text processing. The necessity of experimental control on the reading formats was also pointed out.