Research has been conducted regarding the linguistic structure of children's language usage. There has not, however, been an attempt to relate children's knowledge of vocabulary to their teachers' use of vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the vocabulary used by teachers and the proportion of that vocabulary known by the children in their classrooms. Eight kindergarten and eight first grade teachers from seven schools in a north-central Florida community volunteered to participate in the study. Language samples were tape recorded for each of the teachers during their normal working day. The samples were used to construct word lists and children were then tested for their knowledge of words from these lists. Congruence scores were derived on the basis of words particular teachers used and the percentage of those words their children knew. The high frequency words used by teachers are on the Thorndike-Lorge list. The independent variable contributing most to differences in congruence scores was socio-economic background. The recommendation was made that no efforts towards replication of the study be made because the time required seemed excessive for the results obtained. The word lists resulting from this study appear to be sufficiently reliable that they can serve as a base for subsequent testing of children. (Author)