occur to a skilled artisan and are equivalents for example a mixture of methylbenzoxazole and aromatic aldehyde can be added to base or base can be added to the mixture the process of this invention results in high yielding production of the styrylbenzoxazole iii upon warming of the reaction to about room temperature the reaction of scheme a is preferably run at low temperature in the range between about 100 u00b0 c and about room temperature to effect the reaction of the tolyl derivative of i the temperature range is maintained more preferably at 50 u00b0 c to 0 u00b0 c mixing of i and ii need not be performed at these lower temperatures but cooling to these temperatures is preferred before adding the alkali metal containing base in the process of the present invention it is preferable to have one or more equivalents of ii for each equivalent of i most preferred is about 4 equivalents of ii for each equivalent of i about 1 2 equivalents of base in also most preferred but a suitable range includes about 0 8 to 1 4 equivalents solvents suitable for use in scheme a include e g tetrahydrofuran tetrahydrofuran tert butanol dimethyl sufloxide dmf toluene or hexane tetrahydrofuran tert butanol.