Data collection methods constitute a major area of concern in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) research, since there is no easy way to collect the type of data that is relatively 'naturalistic' while at the same time allowing for researcher control. Further, current ILP research also suffers from the shortage of studies making use of self-report data to understand how L2 learners plan and execute their speech act behavior. This paper discusses the advantages of an innovative method devised for

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... lecting naturalistic data on 'institutional' criticisms and responses to criticisms in the L2 in a controlled manner. The paper also addresses the potential of retrospective interviews in researching IL pragmatic knowledge and issues involved in pragmatic decision-making, especially when used alongside with the performance data. This paper is grounded on data from 4 hours of recordings of 72 peer-feedback conversations by 36 EFL learners and 8 hours of recordings of 36 retrospective interviews with these learners. interview 1998), they are much criticized for their shortcomings in representing authentic speech in terms of response lengths, turn-taking, chance for opting out, and actual wordings (