Four different treatments were used over a period of five months in this experiment concerning the teaching of reading skills to 35 black kindergarten children. The treatments were: (1) spelling patterns/phonic approach using black standard English, (2) a sight approach using black standard English, (3) a sight approach utilizing black nonstandard English during the first two months of instruction, and (4) a spelling patterns/phonic approach utilizing black nonstandard English during the first two months of instruction. The children's proficiency in both standard and nonstandard English was assessed on sentence repetition tests, and an attempt was made to measure their attitude toward black nonstandard speech on a matched guise preference test involving simple like/dislike reactions to 2 guises of 4 different speakers. The main results of the experiments were that the spelling patterns approaches proved superior to the sight approaches in 2 of the criterion measures: the Gates-MacGinitie vocabulary test and experimenter's test that was based specifically on materials covering only the sight approach. No interaction effects between the treatments and either preference for or knowledge of black nonstandard English were detected. (Author/WR)