Various activities, such as oral and poster presentations, provide Japanese learners with opportunities to interact with native speakers. Previous reports dealing with these interactions, however, have rot referred to the actual interactions at a question period, although those activities usually end with it as series. Focussing on the interactions, this paper examines: 1) if the native speakers adjust their talk or not, 2) new the rays of questioning affect the learners' understanding 3) how the questions are introduced shen topic are shifted and how effectively topic openings "maeoki" function. The authors found that the time of topic shifting, especially without "maeoki" can be a critical monent that leads to a failure to understand.
