This study both examines the relationship between oral dialect proficiency--Standard English and Black Nonstandard English--and auditory comprehension of stories presented in Standard or Black Nonstandard English and attempts to obtain information concerning the reactions of black dialect speakers to oral stories in Black Nonstandard English and Standard English. The subjects were 32 black second grade boys and girls from an afterschool community center located in a low income housing project in Harlem. A black undergraduate male functioned as the experimenter. The stimulus materials consisted of a dialect proficiency task and an auditory comprehension task. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of four groups in a 2 by 2 factorial design. The factors were: (1) order of the dialect proficiency task, with either standard dialect first or second, and (2) dialect of auditory comprehension task. Each subject was individually tested. The major finding was that regardless of oral language proficiency in Standard English and in Black Nonstandard English, black second graders presented with oral stories scored higher on the auditory comprehensive questions than did comparable subjects presented with the same stories in Black Nonstandard English. (Author/JM)