The study reported in this article compared the comprehension of 16 nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English on directions to a task presented by a native speaker (NS) under two input conditions: premodified input, in the form of a NS baseline lecturette modified by decreased complexity and increased quantity and redundancy, and interactionally modified input, consisting of the NS baseline lecturette without linguistic premodification, but with opportunities for interaction with the NS. It was found that comprehension was best assisted when the content of the directions was repeated and rephrased in interaction; however, reduction in linguistic complexity in the premodified input was not a significant factor in NNSs' comprehension. It was also found that NS‐NNS interfactional modifications in the form of comprehension and confirmation checks and clarification requests served as a mechanism for NS modification of input, either by encoding or, more frequently, by triggering repetition and rephrasing of input content, and thus played a critical role in comprehension. Results of the study support current theoretical claims regarding the role played by interfactional modifications in facilitating second language comprehension. These results also provide guidelines for restructuring interaction in the classroom to serve learners' needs for comprehensible input.

This study investigates the acquisition of an unfamiliar discursive practice by an adult Vietnamese learner of English. The practice is revision talk in weekly English as a Second Language (ESL) writing conferences between the student and his ESL writing instructor. This research adopts the interactional competence framework for understanding the interactional architecture and participation framework of the practice. It also draws on the theory of situated learning or legitimate peripheral participation in arguing that changes in the student's and instructor's patterns of co-participation demonstrate processes by which the student moved from peripheral to fuller participation. It appears that although the student was the one whose participation was most dramatically transformed, the instructor was a co-learner, and her participation changed in ways that complemented the student's learning. Through close analysis of the revision talk in four successive writing conferences, this study contributes to our understanding of language learning as co-constructed development in situated discursive practices.IN THIS ARTICLE WE REPORT OUR RESEARCH on the sociocultural characteristics of one discursive practice and the interactional processes by which the discursive practice is co-constructed by participants. Discursive practices are recurring episodes of face-to-face interaction, episodes that have social and cultural significance for a community of speakers. Participants co-construct a discursive practice through a configuration of interactional resources that is specific to the practice. This approach to language-in-interaction takes a view of social realities as interactionally constructed rather than existing independently of interaction, of meanings as negotiated through interaction rather than fixed in advance, of the context-bound nature of discourse, and of discourse as social action. In conjunction with this understanding of discursive practice, we view learning, including language learning, as changes in participation in these practices.This view of learning as changing participation is radically different from theories of second language (L2) acquisition that frame language learning as a cognitive process residing in the mind-brain of an individual learner (Long & Doughty, 2003). The view that we present here, instead, is of L2 acquisition as a situated, co-constructed process, distributed among participants. This is a learning theory that takes social and ecological interaction as its starting point and develops detailed analyses of patterns of interaction (Greeno, 1997). In this perspective, language learning is manifested as participants' progress along trajectories of changing engagement in discursive practices, changes that lead from peripheral to fuller participation and growth of identity.Many scholars in the cognitive tradition have accepted a view of language as a set of clearly de-

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A vaidy of the discourse structure of oral language proficiency interviews focused on (1) one principal discourse variable, topic, for analyVng contingency and goal orientation in dyadic interactions, and (2) contextual factors (interlocutor, theme, task, participant gender). Data came from 30 dyadic oral interviews in English as a Second Language recorded in Brazil and Italy. The interview was part of the First Certificate in English examination of the University of Cambridge (England) Local Examinations Syndicate. Portions of the interview analyzed included three tasks: discussion based on photographs; relation of a printed passage to the photographs; and expression of personal preferences about items in a list of activities related to the interview's theme. The study was principally exploratory and descriptive. Results are discussed in terms of the characteristics of native-speaker/non-native-speaker oral interaction. It was found that the two parties made very different contributions to the discourse, with the examiner exerting a controlling influence and the examinee having a more reactive role. Contextual factors found to affect only candidate discourse included individual differences among examiners, especially gender, and task. Contextual influences on the examiner's goal orientation appeared to include gender and interview theme. The major influence on discourse as a whole was task. (MSE)