Virtual exchange for language and culture learning in the Project Teletandem Brasil

The present scenario of online communication and internationalization of Higher Education brings significant impact for language learning by enabling online interactions among peoples with different horizons of understanding, which may lead to the development of intercultural citizenship. In this perspective, we aim to present the Teletandem Brasil Project, an initiative from São Paulo State University (UNESP), which has been fostering virtual exchange for foreign language learning since 2007. Teletandem is a collaborative learning model based on tandem learning that makes use of videoconferencing tools such as Skype to put people in contact to learn foreign languages collaboratively. Each person in the partnership helps his/her partner to learn his/her native language (or a language in which he or she is proficient in). In this way, we can say that foreign language learning in teletandem involves pairs of (native or competent) speakers whose aim is to learn each other’s language by means of bilingual conversation sessions. Tandem is the name given to those bikes that have two seats and two sets of pedals. It represents a metaphor for collaborative learning through the image of the two persons on such bike having to work collaboratively to ride it together. In the case of language learning, this collaborative work lies in the fact that each person in the partnership is both a foreign language learner and a mentor of his or her own language. Teletandem processes are carried out on bases of commonly agreed and shared principles between the participants, which convey that they are autonomous in their learning, but they can resort to a teacher’s professional mediation if they wish. Over the years, group mediation sessions have been conducted in the Teletandem labs at the participating institutions. The project is open to undergraduate and graduate students from São Paulo State University in three different campi, where practice is combined with research. A number of dissertations and theses have focused on this virtual learning context and many articles have been published so far, which can be accessed on http://www.teletandembrasil.org/publications.html. Besides an overview of the Teletandem Project, we intend to focus in this presentation on how the project has been working in our campus (UNESP-Araraquara) since 2012 with partnerships with universities in the USA, Italy, France, Germany, and Colombia.