The purposes of this study were to determine the effect of black English on the auditory discrimination performance of lower class black children, the effects of training on the auditory discrimination performance of lower class black and lower class white children, and the relationship of auditory discrimination performance to reading achievement. The Wepman Auditory Discrimination test and Supplementary Auditory Discrimination Test were administered to 60 low socioeconomic status (SES) black and 60 low SES white first grade children, randomly selected and assigned to one of the two treatment groups of trained or untrained children. The untrained children received the standardized instruction presented in the Wepman manual. The trained children were given guidance in the use of the terms "same" and "different," as well as practice with final consonant discriminations. An analysis of covariance for the 30 different Wepman items, with IQ as covariate, indicated that the black children scored significantly lower than the white children, irrespective of training. Also, it was concluded that low SES white children are not deficient in auditory discrimination ability, and that black English has an influence on the acquisition of word recognition skills by low SES black children. (Author/WR)