Spoken communication in primary school. A classroom-based case study on requests

The article discusses a classroom-based case study involving six primary school classes. Each class took part in a six-hour module dedicated to the speech act of requesting. The effectiveness of the instructional intervention was evaluated through the administration of a pre-test and post-test, in which learners were asked to role play in pairs the target speech act. Data were analysed to describe how learners realized the interactional sequences of the role play task and how they formulated the target speech act within interaction.