An evaluation of kindergarten children's awareness of lexical units and of the relationship of this variable to prediction of beginning reading is presented. Eighty-four kindergarten children--47 boys and 37 girls--served as the subjects and were tested individually for their ability to identify word boundaries spoken in sentences. The study concluded that function words were more difficult to isolate than words having more lexical meaning. The child's sensitivity to the rhythmic aspects of an utterance may influence the way he segments that utterance. Correlations between the testing instruments used in this study and reading readiness test scores were low. Additional conclusions, references, examples of test items, and response patterns are included. (RT)