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Introduction
Expressing oneself fluently and appropriately in oral interaction is a very important goal of language instruction (Payne and Ross, 2005); however, teaching speaking has undoubtedly lagged behind other linguistic skills. According to Bardovi-Harlig and Salsbury, "it is time to make the study of speaking a major source of data. Communicating with someone - especially speaking to someone - is such a basic function of language that it is remarkable that it is not better represented in the interlanguage pragmatics literature" (2004: 199).
Perhaps one reason why conversation has not had an adequate pedagogic treatment is the tacit assumption that conversation could not be taught: "you learn to speak by speaking". With hindsight, we can see that the teaching of conversational competence has mainly concentrated on output processing and on promoting fluency through well-known communicative activities. And although in the last two decades we have learnt that authentic input is an essential requirement in achieving conversational competence, the importance of authentic exposure to oral interaction has very often been missing. Indeed, listening and speaking is a two-way system through which communication is achieved (Oprandy 1994). As Belasco (1967: 112) affirms:
The key to achieving proficiency in speaking is achieving proficiency in listening comprehension. The day when the average foreign language student overhears a conversation between two or more native speakers and has no difficulty in understanding what is being said is the day when [s/he] will be well on the way to developing linguistic competence. To say it right, one must learn to listen.
In fact, input processing is essential in listening comprehension and ultimately in communicative competence (Tschirner, 2001), and therefore it should play a major role in foreign language (FL) classes. However, comprehension and expression have hitherto not been treated in internal relation to one another but as independent constructs, which may explain why the field of oral communication has moved so slowly. This paper aims to highlight the interrelationship between listening and speaking as a prime site for innovation and development of conversation. In order to provide live data, we intend to make use of multimodal texts to expose learners to authentic learning environments so that they can interpret the pragmatic and semiotic variables...