This study was designed to investigate the effect of instruction in oral language (experience activities, synonym generation, and kernel sentence expansion) on certain aspects of first graders' oral language development and reading achievement. First graders in two elementary schools, randomly assigned to control and experimental groups, were divided into instructional groups of five to eight children. Instruction for the experimental group consisted of a total of 20 hours per child, extending over a period of five months. Testing on language-development and reading-comprehension scales revealed that, although generally classroom methodology had little effect on reading achievement, language training had a beneficial effect on children with lower levels of reading readiness who were later taught reading within formally structured, basal reading methodology. (Author/KS)