Redefining Tandem Language and Culture Learning in Higher Education

Claire Tardieu, Céline Horgues, Claire Tardieu, Céline Horgues

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138584617
• eBook ISBN: 9780429000201
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book provides a comprehensive critical account of tandem learning, charting it evolution from its origins in European educational settings to modern programs offering new perspectives on the approach's role within higher education. Taking stock of the ways in which increased globalization has produced new linguistic and sociocultural realities, the volume begins by looking back at the development of tandem learning over the last several decades, growing out of a need to create more opportunities for L2 learners to communicate in their target language. The book then examines the different learning objectives and learning outcomes of tandem learning arrangements, moving toward a discussion of tandem learning's potential role in shaping language policy and the unique challenges involved in implementing tandem programs at higher education institutions. The final section of the book brings the previous discussions together to consider new tools and technology and the ways in which they can better equip language educators to implement tandem learning in their own practice. Highlighting tandem learning's potential to promote multilingual and multicultural learning on a global scale, this volume will be of particular interest to students and researchers in intercultural communication, language education, multilingualism, and applied linguistics.

Part I
Remodelling Tandem Learning and Language Policies

1
Reciprocity 2.0

How Reciprocity Is Mediated Through Different Formats of Learners’ Logs

Marco Cappellini, Anna-Katharina Elstermann and Annick Rivens Mompean

Introduction

Tandem language learning, under its different forms (face-to-face tandem, etandem, teletandem), has been based on two main principles:¹ the principle of autonomy and the principle of reciprocity. These two principles present a strong imbalance in the literature: the principle of autonomy has received wide attention while the principle of reciprocity has been widely mentioned as a pedagogical principle, but without thorough research allowing to explore its theoretical underpinnings and its empirical manifestations. This article draws on recent attempts to overcome this gap (Koch, 2017a, 2017b) to empirically study how reciprocity is implemented in teletandem and how it is mediated in different formats and environments for learners’ metacognition.

We first provide a theoretical discussion of the principle of reciprocity based on published literature on the topic. Secondly, we present our methodology and the data we gathered. In the analysis, we observe and discuss phenomena linked to three areas: the original definition of reciprocity, reciprocity and relationship, the influence of the medium and of the audience on the expression of reciprocity.

Definitions of Reciprocity in Tandem Language Learning

Two recent articles from Koch (2017a, 2017b) aim at providing theoretical foundations to the principle of reciprocity, especially his article on reciprocity in tandem learning (2017a). The second article (2017b) relates reciprocity to contexts of advising and coaching in foreign language learning. In this section, we use his articles as a palimpsest to redraw his arguments in the light of other relevant theoretical references that can subsequently inform our empirical study. We therefore would like to acknowledge the credit for having provided a structured discussion of different arguments that are at stake at the moment.

As a quick search through the literature on tandem confirms, despite the lack of theoretical foundation, the principle of reciprocity appears in every publication and it is largely considered as one of the two main pillars of tandem learning. Brammerts (2002) takes a descriptive stance and asserts that tandem learning takes place within a framework where each partner brings his/her competences into the interaction, and that these competences are the other learner’s pedagogical objective. The relationship demands each partner to be engaged and to facilitate, to scaffold the other’s learning, in order to expect the same help by the interlocutor.

Other researchers, such as Kötter (2003), take a more directive and normative stance, stating that this principle ‘dictates’ that the partners benefit equally from the exchange, which is rendered on a practical level by the fact that the amount of time spent using each language should be equal. All the references to the reciprocity principle in the literature on tandem could be classified according to these two examples: they are rather prescriptive or descriptive. On the practical dimension, the reciprocity principle is then usually associated with the amount of interaction in each language. However, to associate the principle of reciprocity with the division of time in each language is a limitation (Elstermann, 2017, p. 31).

In parallel to tandem learning, in disciplines that deal with conversational interactions and especially in language sciences, reciprocity has taken different, but not unrelated, meanings. In the francophone literature, for instance, Bange (1992) develops the concept of reciprocity initially formulated by Schutz (1954) to indicate the perception that each interlocutor has of the other. In other words, in communication each interlocutor projects onto the other a state of general knowledge present before the interaction and a state of understanding of what is happening in the interaction. An important difference with these studies, also underlined by Koch, is that contrary to daily communication, the frames of reference are not the same in intercultural communication (Koch, 2017a, p. 125). Bange (1992), who considered intercultural encounters, observed that this lack of shared knowledge leads to different kinds of conversational adjustments that relate, on the cognitive level, to what he called ‘bifocalisation’, which is the fact that interlocutors are constantly monitoring if they are aligned and understand ‘the same thing’.

More linked to tandem learning, Koch’s article (2017a) discusses the relationship between the principle of autonomy and the principle of reciprocity. Even if autonomy was linked from the beginning to social interaction, mainly with a counsellor initially (Holec, 1979), recent studies on autonomy have stressed this dimension further (Murray, 2014). Koch notes that the relationship between autonomy and reciprocity may be ambiguous, since on the one hand reciprocity limits autonomy in the sense that the pedagogical objectives of a learner do not necessarily correspond to the partner’s expertise. On the other hand, the autonomization is only made possible through social interaction (Koch, 2017a, p. 119). This reflection runs parallel to Lewis’ on the social dimensions of learner autonomy, among which Lewis identifies reciprocity (2014, p. 45). This term is used for the description of autonomous learning communities, in which a participant who contributes to the learning expects the others to participate in an equal way. These observations lead to a theoretical understanding of the two principles as strictly interrelated in tandem.

After these considerations, Koch (2017a, pp. 126–127) concludes with a tentative definition of reciprocity in communication:

Reciprocity is the mode and rhythm of the exchange of information and objects in a given historical sociocultural situation between two or more communicators which bears the obligation to respond to a perceived impulse or gift in a way and time frame that corresponds to an acknowledged convention. It contributes to the building and perception of meaning, social relationship and stratification.

He subsequently identifies five possible dimensions of reciprocity in tandem learning:

1. Organisational: interactions are divided into two parts and both languages are used. Collaboration between partners is achieved at best through explicit negotiation or usually through implicit adjustments;
2. Intercultural: intercultural differences are treated as conversational topics and each partner explains to the other one element of his/her culture (for a critical approach to this view of culture in tandem, see also Cappellini & Rivens Mompean, 2015);
3. Discursive: during tandem interactions the interlocutors adapt to each other in multimodal ways accomplishing social interactional acts such as turn taking (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974). This dimension relates mostly to co- or para-verbal dimensions of communication and is largely unconscious;
4. Semantic: participants negotiate the meaning of words and concepts in order to align their understanding;
5. Use of the interlocutor’s target language: this dimension relates to the conversational adjustments.

(Bange, 1992)

Koch concludes his article (2017a) with a call for empirical studies to confirm (and we would add, possibly infirm) this conceptualization of reciprocity in tandem learning.

Methodology

Research Objectives and Research Questions

The aim of our study is to deepen the understanding of learners’ representations of the reciprocity principle in tandem learning and to categorize them. Based on this research objective, we have formulated the following research questions:

1. How do foreign language learners express aspects of reciprocity, which they experienced in their teletandem sessions, in different forms of reflective environments?
2. How do the medium and the possible audience influence the reflective writings in the logs?

Contexts

Our study investigates data from three tandem settings through desktop videoconference projects, i.e., teletandem (Telles, 2009): the teletandem between the State University of São Paulo (Brazil) and the Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany) (Elstermann, 2017), the teletandem between Lille University (France) and Georgetown University (USA) and the tele-tandem exchange between Lille University and University of Western Australia (Moraes Garcia, O’Connor, & Cappellini, 2017). In the three telecollaboration projects, learners had a proficiency level ranging from A1 to C1, as defined by Common European Framework (Council of Europe, 2001). In the Brazilian-German project, 14 participants have participated in four teletandem sessions in average. In the French-American one, there were 32 participants who participated in six sessions and in the French-Australian one, there were 16 students participating in six sessions.

Data Collection and Corpus of Analysis

In the three telecollaboration settings, students had to keep a reflective log about their teletandem sessions. Even if the pedagogical objectives of these logs were the same in the three telecollaborations, their formats were different.

In the Brazilian-German exchange, participants were advised, but not obliged, to work with learner logs to document and accompany their own learning process. The learner log model was prepared with questions in a Microsoft Word document and provided to all participants by e-mail. The learner log could be written in their native language—Portuguese. The addressee of the learner logs was, theoretically, the learner him/herself and, practically, the teletandem coordinator. The collected corpus gathers about 19 documents with a total of about 10.000 words.

As for the Lille-Georgetown teletandem, students also had to keep a log. However, this was done within a collective blog, where each student on the French side of the telecollaboration had to post a weekly entry corresponding to his log. Consequently, the addressee of the reflective writing was not only the tutor, but also the entire group of learners on the French side. The aim of the blog was to allow students to share their learning strategies and their impressions, in order to develop their learning strategies and learning resource repertoires (Cappellini, 2015). The 17 students on the French side were allowed to produce their log in French or in English. A large majority of students decided to write in their native language. This resulted in a total sub-corpus of about 68,000 words.

The sub-corpus from the Teletandem Lille-UWA presents the same format as the French-American one, but in this case the collective blog was shared on both sides of the telecollaboration. Australian students had to write in French, French students were free to choose the language used. The 16 students participating in the telecollaboration produced a total corpus of about 27,000 words.

All the data have been collected directly from the students’ logs. For the Brazilian logs, they were reproduced the way they were received by the tutor. As for the two blogs, data (including text, pictures and structure of the exchange) were extracted from the blogs and pasted into word documents.

Table 1.1 summarizes the composition of the corpus of analysis:

Table 1.1 Corpus of analysis

Tele collaboration	Number of students	Languages	Number of words
Teletandem Brazil	10 out of 14	Portuguese	10,286
TeletandemLille-Georgetown	17 out of 34	French and English	68,743
Teletandem Lille-UWA	16 out of 16	French and English	26,953
Total			105,982

Analysis

In our analysis we have adopted a qualitative approach (Ware & Rivas, 2012), aiming at accessing the students’ perspective. In other words, we have analysed our data looking for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ Biographies
• Contributors
• Tables and Figures
• General Editors’ Preface
• Introduction
• PART I Remodelling Tandem Learning and Language Policies
• PART II Tandem and (Language and Culture) Learning
• PART III Running Tandem Programmes
• Conclusion: Redefining Tandem Language and Culture Learning in Higher Education
• Index