Four age levels of 80 learning disabled (LD) students (7.5-8.11, 9.0-10.5, 10.6-11.11, and 12.0-13.5 years) participated in an examination of syntactic maturity and vocabulary richness in their oral language. Ss were shown two films without the sound turned on, and were then tape recorded as they told the story of the film in their own words. Transcriptions were analyzed with two measures of syntactic maturity (including the Syntactic Density Score) and two of vocabulary richness (Vocabulary Intensity Index and the corrected type-token ratio). Among findings were that a developmental pattern of syntactic maturity existed as measured by the number of T-units (minimal terminable unit) and the average number of words per T-unit; normal children as measured by length of T-unit experienced periods of rapid growth while LD Ss exhibited gradual progress in their control of syntax throughout the age levels, and there was no observable vocabulary developmental pattern as measured by the Vocabulary Intensity Index and simple type-token ratio. Findings suggested that observation and analysis of oral language should be an integral part of classroom assessment procedures. (CL)