Teletandem and culture-related episodes

Abstract

Teletandem is a telecollaborative learning context that involves pairs ofnative (or competent) speakers of different languages. Using Skype, eachparticipant plays the role of learner for half an hour by speaking andpracticing the language of his partner. This paper focuses on a teletandeminteraction between two university students – one Brazilian and oneAmerican. In the fi rst part, we sustain our proposition that the teletandemparticipants share information regarding the respective cultures. In thesecond part, we present fi ve dimensions of the concept of culture, defi necultural learning and propose a unit of analysis for interpreting the data– the culture-related episode. Finally, we suggest guidelines for furtherresearch related to the learning of languages and cultures in onlinecollaborative contexts.