When children begin formal schooling, their fundamental communication skills, speaking and listening, are well developed but limited in scope and range; it becomes the teacher's task to assist the children in achieving communicative competence. A developmental project called "Developing Communicative Competence in Children" identifies four principal features of speech communication competence, each related to interactive behaviors in social contexts. These are: an available repertoire of experiences, the ability to make critical choices from that repertoire, implementation of suitable behaviors in performing desired tasks, and objective evaluation of performance behaviors. Instruction strategies can enhance functional communicative competence by observing the following principles: speech behaviors are highly personal, the rate of development varies in children, human interactions are dynamic, real life performance is the goal of communication, the interpretation and creation of messages must be child-centered, and communicative competence can be a challenge for all children, both gifted and handicapped. (MAI)