Four research-based principles offer guidance to educators aiming to facilitate young children's acquisition of communicative competence. These principles concern the effect of interaction on the development of competence; the necessity for content in interaction; the requirement that content be ecologically valid to participants; and the impact of reciprocity in interaction on interpersonal as well as communicative competence. Educational practices likely to help children develop competence involve the availability of opportunities for interaction; involvement of children in long-term projects; participation of children in mixed-age and mixed-competence groups; using the technique of "reflection" to let children know that their feelings are accepted and to encourage children to make their understandings and misunderstandings explicit; the teacher's role in modeling language use; opportunities for children to talk with other children about many subjects; and talking to children in a serious, authentic, non-artificial way. Practices likely to inhibit the development of competence include teacher-directed large-group instruction; premature formal whole-group instruction; bias in student/teacher interaction; overuse of interrogation as a teaching technique; allowing judgments of children's competence to influence response time allocated to children; focusing on language as an object of primary concern; and bribing reluctant children to speak. Improving educational practice is likely to require giving attention to: (1) teachers' comprehension of communicative competence; (2) detrimental customs and traditions in educational practice; and (3) institutional constraints on instruction. (RH)