This series, designed for use in inservice teacher workshops, addresses the question, "How do children and teachers use language to get things done?" The transcribed classroom discourse presented and discussed in each volume illustrates functional language in a real context based on the videotaping of undoctored classroom events from kindergarten and grades 1 to 3. Each manual contains workshop exercises to be used with the videotape, describes the theoretical framework from which the work stems, and includes verbal transcripts of the language used in the tapes. The present volume describes the principle of functional language in some detail, calling into question conventional school language assessment which deals only with language forms (sounds, vocabulary, and grammar) while often ignoring meaning relationships (semantics) and language use (pragmatics). The videotape depicts the testing of a young girl's language by eliciting responses to a set of questions based on the child's life. (Author/JB)