The development and use of verbal and nonverbal communication by children in the early stages of second language acquisition were investigated in a natural setting. Twenty young speakers of Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Spanish, Icelandic, and Polish, enrolled in a multilingual program and ranging in age from 7 to 12 years, served as subjects. All of the children knew very little or no English, were literate in their native languages, and had well-educated parents. For instructional purposes, the children were divided into two groups according to age and maturity level during 30-minute daily periods for the instruction of English as a second language. Videotapes of these sessions were made once a week throughout the 1981-1982 school year, and audiotapes were made of the first 10 minutes of two other sessions each week. Additional observations and recordings were also conducted. Videotapes were scripted and checked by four researchers; all communicative acts in each sequence were then coded for inferred speaker intent, according to a system adapted from Dore (1978). Results describing sequences of events, communicative functions and forms, conversations, and narratives are discussed. (Findings were derived from a total of 8 hours of videotaping.) It is concluded that the narrative and conversational patterns children select appear to be systematically related to their success in learning English. (RH)