&NA;An understanding of normal adolescent development is requisite as a context within which to consider adolescents with language disorders. To develop meaningful educational programs and effective intervention, professionals must have a conceptual framework of the social and academic demands of adolescence and overlay on that framework an understanding of the role that language plays in each of these arenas. Toward that end, this article presents a discussion of peer relationships. family relationships, and the contexts of middle or junior high and high school as experienced by normally developing adolescents and offers implications in each of these areas for adolescents with language disorders.