2008

This Action Research describes the effects that the teaching of Corpus-informed conversation strategies produces on elementary EFL students' oral interaction. Lt presents operational definitions for Communicative Language Teaching, Corpusinformed teaching material, Oral lnteraction performance indicators, and Corpusinformed /exical chunks. One assumption is that Corpus-informed conversation strategies are very frequently used language that promote oral interaction, leading students into focusing on communication by managing these strategies in genuine settings in classroom activities. The intervention was conducted at a prívate English institute in Guayaquil, Ecuador, with a homogeneous sample of 28 students that attended guided instruction on a regular basis. In order to answer how Corpus-informed conversation strategies affect oral interaction, the study methodology was mainly pre-experimental with pre and post tests. An oral interaction sea/e rubric for overa/1 score and an oral exam were used for the data collecting: observation and assessment were done on student-student interaction. The sea/e to measure oral interaction included 3 performance indicators: lnitiate and Respond, Hesitation Management, and Tumtaking and Tumgiving. After the analysis, the resu/ts indicate that these strategies produced 57. 1 % increase in the overa/1 sea/e, and 112% increase in the Tumtakinglgiving indicator.