The casual conversation of six pairs of Japanese and six pairs of American colleges students was analyzed for evidence of two related aspects of conversation management: the linguistic characteristics of utterance units and back-channel strategies. Utterance units are defined as those occurring between identifiable pauses or breaks in tempo. Back-channel expressions are brief comments received by the person who has the turn without relinquishing the turn (e.g., "uh huh"). The continuous flow of back-channel behavior by Japanese listeners and the speaker's ready acceptance of feedback, which is extraordinarily frequent in comparison to American English, suggest that Japanese interactants have a strong indication for mutual monitoring and cooperation. This supports evidence found in non-contrastive studies. Teachers are encouraged to incorporate culture-specific conversation management techniques into classroom language instruction. These would include strategies for starting and ending conversations, turn-taking, sending back-channel expressions, introducing a new topic and developing it interactionally, and understanding the interactional style as it is socioculturally defined in the target language community. (MSE)