Throughout the past two decades, interactional competences and practices have gained unprecedented attention in research on second language (L2) acquisition, use and education. Following Dell Hymes’ conceptualization of communicative competence, various lines of research have for long been concerned with pragmatic development in an L2, mostly focusing on the realization of speech acts. Yet, it is only recently that research has started to systematically investigate how people's capacity to engage in social interaction is affected in their L2 and how their ability to participate in such interaction evolves over time.