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Human tutors have made use of natural language during instruction for all of recorded history, with many differences in the manner of delivery (didactic, Socratic, peer interaction, etc.). While initial computer-based instructional systems were not able to make use of natural language, discourse, or dialogue-based instruction, modern ITSs have sought to integrate these various faculties. These systems draw from the large body of evidence of the success of these techniques. While the goal of this book is to produce design recommendations, this chapter has the additional goal of providing background information for other work within this section. This chapter reviews the natural divisions of dialogue-centric systems, elucidates the reasons for their creation, examines their successes, and recommends when and where one can make maximum use of these techniques.