Intercultural Learning in Pre-mobility Teletandem

Abstract

Our study focuses on a teletandem (Telles) environment for pre-mobility language and intercultural development. The telecollaborations’ main pedagogical objective was the development of the intercultural competence with a shift from more savoir-based culturalist development (Abdallah-Pretceille and Porcher) to a development in terms of savoir-apprendre (Byram and Zarate). This aim was pursued by the design of six teletandem tasks. Moreover, to enable students to reflect on their learning and to share their learning strategies and reflections, within the telecollaborations we set up two collective reflective blogs (Cappellini, “Du carnet”) where the students had to post an entry after each teletandem session. By analyzing the students’ posts in these blogs, we observe convergence and divergence between the pedagogical intentions of the telecollaboration designers (or task-as-workplan, “Divergent perceptions”) and the actual outcomes (or task-as-process). Finally, we draw some pedagogical suggestions on how to improve task design for autonomous intercultural learning.