Foreign language learning in Teletandem: A German-Brazilian collaboration project from the student’s perspective

Abstract

This article presents the results of an international Teletandem cooperation project between the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of São Paulo, with primary focus on the impact of the program from the perspective of the students who participated in the program. Teletandem partnerships are based on cooperations between universities around the world, offering students with different target languages the opportunity to deepen their language and cultural knowledge in a common context in video conferences (e.g. via Meet, Zoom, Skype). In this project, in which Brazilian and German students were involved, the students were accompanied by the project coordinators at three group meetings (introductory meeting, intermediate feedback and final feedback meeting) in addition to learning with their peers during the Tandem interactions. In order to establish hypotheses about the goals, expectations and experiences of Brazilian and German students, two data collections were carried out through online questionnaires. The results indicate a great potential of Teletandem projects, not only for better communication in the target language, but also for increasing motivation, autonomy and empathy as well as for critical reflection on the individual learning process.