This brochure is intended to be a useful tool for assessing students' development along a continuum of oral language growth as well as for providing information about the competencies that students are expected to learn in preschool and first grade. On the continuum in the brochure, descriptors list specific behaviors that detail students' development at particular ages or grades; the competencies list specific behaviors that students are expected to learn in kindergarten and first grade according to the 1999 North Carolina Standard Course of Study for English/Language Arts. The brochure cites the following: descriptors for preschool (3-4 years and 4-5 years); competencies and descriptors for kindergarten (5-6 years); and competencies and descriptors for first grade (6-7 years). It also lists the following functions of oral language: instrumental, informative, personal, heuristic, regulatory, interactional, and aesthetic. (NKA)