Teletandem language learning in a technological context of education: interactions between Brazilian and German students

Abstract

This paper presents data from a computer-mediated communication study conducted between a group of Brazilian university students – from Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Goiás, Campus Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil – who wanted to learn English, and a group of German university students – from the University of Worms, in Germany – who wanted to learn Portuguese. The cross-cultural bilingual communication was conducted in the second semester of 2010 and involved discussions on environmental issues. Adopting a qualitative perspective in the analysis, the data were derived from conversation sessions through a webconferencing software known as Openmeetings and through e-mails and some written activities developed by the students. All these were analyzed by means of sociocultural theory. Among the conclusions we reached, we observed that the participants used the software features to help them in their language learning process, discussed issues related to environmental science, as well as topics related to their personal and academic life. Regarding the languages used, the participants used English during the teletandem sessions as an anchoring language to assist their partners in learning English itself and Portuguese, as well as introduced the German language in the interaction sessions.