Learner Autonomy and Tandem Learning: Putting Principles Into Practice in Synchronous and Asynchronous Telecommunications Environments

This paper gives me very detailed information about what tandem learning is by stating two examples. The first one is tandem email as a form of asynchronous communication. With this project, I realized that in order to have a better outcome and work effectively, learners in both classes need to share a similar age or subject areas so that they have common topics to talk about. Besides, the classes should be compulsory language courses and they have the opportunity to select their partners themselves. However, there are still problems with recent projects, problems like teachers need to create meaningful tasks in collaboration with the learners. The email exchanges are difficult to monitor and evaluate. As time goes by, the learning partnership might turn into a keypalship, neglecting the billingual and reciprocal aspects. Also, learners find it difficult to revise their L2 output.

The second example is tandem MOO as a form of synchronous communication. It provides a contextually rich and permanent environment, where learner has more opportunities for control and participation. It is more difficult to set up as there are time zone differences, however, it is more easier to manage, monitor and evaluate then email exchanges. Moo sessions took place during scheduled class sessions and learners used the MOO notebook as a learner diary to record after each session what they had discussed. There are some difficulties, such as the tasks did not lead to a collaborative goal. The number of learners did not exactly match the number of partners. The notebook was not used by all learners. There was an imbalance in bilingualism in favour of the more proficient L2 group.