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

Abstract

This paper presents data from a computer-mediated communicationstudy conducted between a group of Brazilian university students – fromInstituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Goiás,Campus Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil – who wanted to learn English, and agroup of German university students – from the University of Worms, inGermany – who wanted to learn Portuguese. The cross-cultural bilingualcommunication was conducted in the second semester of 2010 and involveddiscussions on environmental issues. Adopting a qualitative perspective inthe analysis, the data were derived from conversation sessions through awebconferencing software known as Openmeetings and through e-mailsand some written activities developed by the students. All these wereanalyzed by means of sociocultural theory. Among the conclusions wereached, we observed that the participants used the software features tohelp them in their language learning process, discussed issues relatedto environmental science, as well as topics related to their personal andacademic life. Regarding the languages used, the participants used English during the teletandem sessions as an anchoring language to assist theirpartners in learning English itself and Portuguese, as well as introducedthe German language in the interaction sessions.