Two scenarios dealing with the themes of schedule conflict and mistaken identity were performed by a class of beginning students of English as a second language at the University of Delaware. The class was divided into groups of five or six students; each group was assigned either Role A or Role B of one of the two scenarios. As in standard Strategic Interaction (SI) procedure, each group was allowed to know only the information written on its role card. The purpose of the exercise was to obtain greater insight into how SI activities contribute to the learning process. Comparison of the two performances revealed significant differences in the use of communication strategies and in control of vocabulary and the mechanisms of conversational management. Five features of the discourse were observed: use of communication strategies, consultation with supporting groups, control over target-language vocabulary, strategic interplay, and strategic conversational mechanisms. It was found that while the students abandoned communication strategies as they became more confident with the target language, they did not necessarily give up their interactive intentions. (MSE)