This collection of essays is a distillation of what I have learned as a speech-language pathologist and teacher of speech-language pathologists, and continue to learn, as I read new research studies and think about their application to practice. The essays are not comprehensive reviews of evidence but are my organized reflections on topics of clinical relevance. The set included in this book was written between March of 2002 and December of 2004, and each one begins with summaries of a research article or two that first appeared during, or close to, this period. The summaries are followed by a general commentary and a discussion of clinical applications that reflect the decades that I have spent thinking and talking about early language intervention. The material in the essays was written initially for speech-language pathologists, but language specialists from other disciplines (e.g., special education, early childhood education, clinical linguistics, or second language learning) should also find much that is relevant to their educational practice.