The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of selected facets of the oral language performance of pre-first grade children to readiness for beginning reading. The oral language of two groups of kindergarten children in interaction with an adult was compared. One group was black, the other Caucasian; both were from inner-city schools. The oral language production and syntactical ability of the poverty child was investigated. The basic hypotheses of the study dealt with the relationships of the subtests of the Metropolitan Readiness Test to the total number of words used by the children, the total number of sentences used, the total number of words used in sentences, the syntactical pattern, and the percentage of occurrence of these syntactical patterns. The correlation data suggested that the relationships among the oral language factors studied were strongest among the total number of words used, the total number of sentences used, and the total number of words used in sentences. Mean length of sentences did not emerge as a significant oral language factor. The hypothesis that there would be significant differences between the black and Caucasian children in the oral language criteria of this study did not find support. (Author/WR)