The discussion following Roger Shuy's presentation on "The Mismatch of Child Language and School Language" focuses on the value of studying language functions, the problems associated with identifying those language functions and their stages of development, and whether knowledge of such language functions will increase reading teacher effectiveness. Treating language as a set of functional components to be learned and applied in appropriate situations (such as using language to promise, to be invited, or to infer correct answers on tests from context clues) has just begun, but the initial research is encouraging. Moreover, knowledge of language functions may be of special value to reading teachers rather than to students learning to read, since teachers could concentrate on observing students' effective language usage rather than having students imitate artificial standards of "correct" intonation and grammar. Although the study of language functions would only be one part of a general reading program, continued research into this area of reading instruction should improve reading teacher effectiveness. (RL)