The Word Meaning section of the Metropolitan Readiness Test, Form A, was questioned as a true measure of the capabilities of culturally disadvantaged children. Therefore, an attempt was made to compare the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test with a test in which as many objects as possible were renamed to coincide with the language of the students being tested. In order to test this two alterations were made to the Metropolitan Test. First, nine items on the original test were modified to reflect greater cultural relevance. Second, a test in which all items were redesigned was constructed. Both were administered to 180 first grade students by their individual teachers and scores were compared with initial scores on the original Metropolitan. The two modified tests were administered to the same students a second time as a check for reliability. Scores were significantly higher for the culturally modified tests. These results seem to support the statement that use of regional or colloquial language expressions of children will increase children's scores on a reading readiness test. Both the partially and completely modified tests are included in the appendixes. (Author/MKM)