This guide presents strategies to teach students with mental retardation to request their preferences, protest non-preferred activities, and clarify misunderstandings. The strategies were field tested with more than 200 children and adults in community, residential, vocational, and educational settings. Suggestions are included for instructing students who communicate in various modes, including gestural, verbal, sign language, and communication boards. An introductory chapter identifies the assumptions on which the strategies are based and offers general recommendations regarding the teaching of pragmatic communication skills. Chapter 2 discusses the specifics of how to teach pragmatic communication skills and covers: choosing a communication mode, preassessment, developing criteria-based objectives, ongoing assessment while teaching, determining mastery, determining student preferences, initial teaching, and providing prompting strategies. Chapter 3 is on expanding communication across natural environments and covers ongoing assessment (including the mand-model approach, time delay, and incidental teaching); enhancing maintenance of skills; and teaching practitioners to use the prompting strategies. Chapter 4 offers case studies in teaching these skills in a residential environment, a classroom, a home, a home with a sibling, and a community. Chapter 5 stresses the value of pragmatic communication skills in helping students become equal partners in communicative interactions. (Contains 26 references.) (DB)