The linguistic abilities demonstrated by second grade students show a high level of competence in the use of syntactic structures and lexicon. This report describes and interprets, in terms of language function, the talking and writing of fifteen Australian children. Transcripts of conversations provide the basis for the linguistic analysis and give insight into the social interaction of children, as well as the regulatory and manipulative role language plays in it. Chapters of the report discuss the way in which children speak concurrently in discussions, explore through words the new dimensions of experience, deal with incomplete information, and sort out the function of writing as essentially different from talking. Five appendixes interpret the linguistic data scientifically and contain reproductions of the writing samples. (MAI)