Interactants use a variety of linguistic expressions such as pronouns, names and noun phrases of varying complexity to refer to people, places, things, and other entities. On the basis of their estimation of their common ground and on their judgements about how accessible referents will be to their partners, speakers select these referring expressions strategically so that they will produce in the hearer a mental representation which is adequate for present purposes. The choice of a certain referring expression is thus the result of interactive negotiations. The project aims at analysing these reference assignment strategies in English as native second and foreign language. For this purpose, we recorded, transcribed, and analysed student interactions in California and Giessen. For the recordings pairs of students were asked to watch a silent Charlie Chaplin movie (The Immigrant, 1911). The movie lasts about twenty minutes and tells the story of how Charlie Chaplin as an immigrant travels on an ocean liner to the United States. On the voyage he befriends a beautiful young woman who is travelling with her mother. The first part of the movie ends with the arrival in New York. At this point we ask one of the participants to leave the room and let the other watch the rest of the movie. The second half begins with the disembarkation and separation of Chaplin from the young woman and her mother. The main scene of the second half is a restaurant, where Chaplin by chance meets the young woman again. In front of the restaurant he found a coin with which he was going to pay for his own and for her meal, but without noticing it he had immediately lost it again, which means that he will not be able to pay for the bill. The pair is rescued by another diner in the restaurant, a rich artist, who takes a keen interest in them and offers them employment. In the end, they leave the restaurant and Chaplin drags the somewhat reluctant young woman into the marriage licence office.