El funcionamiento de los turnos de apoyo en la conversación en ELE de estudiantes italianos

The listener´s role in oral interaction is a matter of increasing interest regarding the research of conversation. In this essay we focus on the specific phenomenon known as the turn alternation and, inside it, the interactive speaking turns that are a result of constructing the same interaction as well as the speech turns. From the theoretical and methodical frame of the analysis of the conversation, combined with the sociolinguistic techniques, we have carried out a research about the functioning of the listener´s responses in spontaneous conversations held in Spanish and Italian by Italian students from two levels of Spanish competence. The qualitative and quantitative analyses have allowed us to determine the influence of the foreign language competence level in the strategies to use interactive speaking turns, the role of the mother tongue in the conversational competence in the aimed language and to characterize the conversational styles of Italian natives, regarding the functioning of the interactive speaking turns, that is to say, the listener´s role in the co-construction of the interaction in Italian language.