The oral language differences between Negro and Puerto Rican youngsters were compared in the hope that the study would be relevant to curriculum modifications for specific populations. Subjects (Ss) were five Negro and six Puerto Rican third grade girls in inner city classrooms. The facility of Ss in language use independent of vocabulary and specific information was measured by the Dailey Language Facility Test. Scores were obtained for language facility, syntactic structure, and fluency. The median scores on language facility were 14.5 for Puerto Rican Ss and 20.0 for Negro Ss. On syntactic structure Puerto Rican Ss used twice as many fragments as Negro Ss. Fluency was greater for Negroes as shown by the median total number of words--289 for Negro Ss compared with 81 for Puerto Ricans. (NH)