Recently the relevance of dialectological study to reading instruction has become apparent. The teacher speaks one language while the child, often disadvantaged, speaks another. The ability to identify utterances is attributed to human tolerance called the phoneme concept, a generalization of a potentially infinite number of sounds into a small number of speech sound concepts or classes. When a group agrees on a body of phonemes, it shares a particular phonemic inventory. In learning a second language, the individual usually substitutes those sounds not existing in his own tongue with similar ones present in his own native inventory. A similar situation exists between standard English and its dialects. If a phoneme-grapheme correspondence is to be taught, the phonemes used as reference patterns must be determined. The usual tests to determine auditory discrimination are based on inadequate phonetic knowledge. Teacher training should include dialectology, speech sound analysis, and the concept of phonemes. A good reading teacher must either learn the child's dialect or teach him the standard dialect as a second language. (WL)