To achieve the goal of communicative competence, second language instruction should incorporate the results of ethnomethodology research. Ethnomethodologists are interested in the shared rules of interpretation which members of a culture utilize during their conversational interchanges. "Applied ethnomethodology" in the ESL classroom would mean inclusion of materials which explicitly point out those implicit, underlying rules for interaction used by Americans, especially where they differ from the students' own. For example, the Japanese have a very strict code for who speaks next in a conversation--the older, higher--ranking person holding the floor until he voluntarily yields it to another. Interruption is frowned upon and there is little tradition of a dialectic style. The Japanese, then, as well as other non-native English speakers, must learn not only a new language structure but new language behavior patterns. Rules for speaker selection and rules for interrupting may be introduced by using dialogues or other oral-skill-development techniques which simulate situations where such problems of interaction occur. Triologues, with two native speakers and one non-native speaker, can produce effective results. (HW)