Evidence from the language use of young children is used to question accepted notions of language development and instruction in the three papers in this compilation. The first paper, "Young Children Challenge the Belief That Language Needs to be Taught Sequentially," challenges the notion of sequential development in which oral language and art precede the development of written language. Language arts curricula based on this theory are also called into question. The second paper, "Unperceived Sensitivities," redefines a language event as the transactions that occur within it and proposes a key strategy, "negotiability," that is learned early by children and used by them and by adults in their language transactions. Several examples of children using the strategy are included, and it is stressed that to understand negotiability one has to understand that language is a social event rather than an act. The third paper, "The Effects of Pragmatics on Written Language Development," uses examples from young children to address three related questions: (1) How does pragmatics affect written language usage in different contextual settings? (2) How does instruction influence the child's view of the situation? and (3) What are some instructional strategies for promoting rule governed behaviors in a variety of written language settings? (JL)