This article suggests that to better prepare students for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) oral proficiency interview, it is up to instructors to see that these students are better prepared in oral, creative speech. Bridging exercises between dialogue memorization and personalized situations can be used to help students internalize the language of dialogue. The scripted situation is a simple bridging exercise that presents dialogue, line by line, on two cards that students work through in pairs. Although scripted text exercises do not lend themselves well to grading, they are excellent sources for detection of pronunciation problems and intonational errors. These cards can draw timid students from their attachment to a memorized text and can serve as prompts for student performance-based evaluations. The scripted situations are written in English and can be easily developed on 3x5 cards or on a computer page. Over time, scripting instructions can be reduced until only the Russian word and a few English words will set the situation and expected dialogue. (Contains seven references.) (NAV)