Children in school cooperate in the evaluation of their products and activities by teachers and other students by calling attention to these products and activities with various language strategies. The requests that someone notice something and/or praise it are the data base for this study. The unmarked speech act for this request type is in the form of a yes/no or WH question that directly probes the hearer's opinion (e.g., "How do you like my sailboat?""Do you like my batik?"). Video-taped samples of direct and indirect speech acts by children in nursery school and grades K-3 develop lines of research found in Sadock (1974) and Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). The occurrence at all grade levels of direct imperatives (as numerous as the unmarked response), other interrogative forms, and declaratives provides evidence: (1) for children's understanding and competence in the use of indirect forms (Shatz 1974; Garvey 1975), and (2) that the apparent "mismatch" between the grammatical surface form of an utterance and its function in discourse can be accounted for by information concerning school setting, the social conventions, and the relationship between participants. Evidence is also provided for developmental stages in the acquisition of understanding of and competence in use of indirect forms. (Author)