This article describes processes of facilitation involved in exolingual conversation, i.e., interaction between partners who are dynamically adjusting their respective linguistic performances. The type of exolingual conversation examined in this paper is that between foreign learners and native speakers.

The foreign learner's linguistic competence, known as interlanguage, and his performance, which I refer to as intertalk, give rise to certain strategies in exolingual conversation. By studying these strategies, linguists can describe communicatively competent behavior in second language acquisition.

I conclude that such behavior is dynamic and creative, incapable of being described and defined within predetermined structures.

This study deals with the acquisition of narrative competence in French as a second language by an Arabic-speaking migrant worker in interaction with a target language speaker. In particular, it is devoted to an analysis of the role played by certain forms like voilà and il [madi] / moi je [di] in narratives. On the basis of a significant difference in the occurrence of these forms in successive encounters in the course of a longitudinal study, hypotheses are formulated about the polyfunctional uses of voilà, il [modi] / moi je [di] as a way for the learner to differentiate the narrative planes, to mark the chronology of events in the narrative, or to introduce quoted speech.

This paper analyzes the characteristics of exolinguistic communication, a type of asymmetric communication. The data base contains five dialogues between French speakers and Latin American Spanish speakers. The subjects did not have any knowledge of French before their arrival in France. The recording situations were as authentic and varied as possible.

In exolinguistic communication two speakers actively work together with varying degrees of cooperation and complementary strategies to achieve mutual understanding. In this study we examine the role of repetition, simplification, and facilitation (breaking up information, paraphrases, types of questions which warn of difficulties, etc.) and analyze the characteristics of asymmetric exchanges made up of three- or four-turn sequences which allow speakers to check understanding and avoid misunderstanding.

This leads to several hypotheses on natural second language acquisition and, more specifically, on the “guidance” offered by the native speaker and on the role of metalinguistic activities.