In this study, the Peabody Language Development Kit, originally designed for culturally deprived and mentally retarded children, was tested to see how it affected the psycholinguistic abilities and beginning reading development of normal children. Ninety-seven kindergartners were randomly divided into an experimental group who used the Peabody Kit and a control group taught language skills by conventional methods. The experimental treatment emphasized (1) oral expression, (2) divergent thinking, (3) use of spoken analogy, (4) automatic use of inflectional endings, (5) auditory memory, and (6) visual memory. The control treatment stressed convergent thinking and tasks requiring paper and pencil responses on the part of the child. At the end of the 24-week treatment period a random sample of 30 subjects from each group was given the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. The experimental group performed significantly better than the control group, especially in the Auditory-Vocal Association and the Vocal Encoding subtests. The subjects were randomly distributed (control and experimental groups together) into first grade classes for training in the Ginn Basic Reader. At the end of the year, the same sample of 30 subjects from each group was given the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test. There was no significant difference between groups. (MH)