eTandem

Initial situation

The eTandem project is part of the larger ChineWeb project on the use of technology for teaching and learning a language and culture. It was born out of a collaboration with the University of Hubei (Wuhan, China), which was later joined by the Institut national des langues et cultures orientales (INALCO, Paris). The teacher wanted to script effective activities for the oral practice of Chinese. The students on their side clearly expressed a need to be able to express themselves and communicate better in Chinese.

Project implementation

The eTandem project is scripted according to the modalities of Design Based Research. The course is delivered entirely at a distance via Moodle. To register for the course, participants complete an initial questionnaire establishing their identity and language profile. Once registered, each student introduces him/herself in a forum and contacts a partner to set up tandems. Each French-speaking student studying Chinese is thus paired with a Chinese-speaking student learning French.

During a semester, the students meet each other virtually to exchange 30 minutes in Chinese and 30 minutes in French. The topics discussed (such as health, cooking, hobbies, etc.) are open enough to adapt to the level of the students of the three institutions. Students are also encouraged to suggest topics that interest them. One hour of exchange requires one hour of preparation. A whole series of documents in the form of images, pdf, audios or videos are made available to the students. Texts and lexicons can be worked on with memory aids such as Quizlet and Anki used by the learners.

In addition to their oral skills, students also work on written reception, as a summary of the discussions must be written in their respective mother tongues after each exchange and posted on a forum. This provides students with a bilingual written summary of their discussion. The use of WeChat and other exchange tools also allows for a small amount of electronic written production.

A second questionnaire on the quality of the exchange is completed individually by the students at the end of each session. A third questionnaire evaluates and closes the eTandem course at the end of the semester.

Students’ questions can be discussed during the parallel face-to-face translation course or in the forum provided for this purpose. Feedback from the respective teachers at each institution is scheduled in person during the last week of the semester, followed by the completion of the online evaluation questionnaire. In Geneva, the teacher also provides individual feedback during the second semester, which finalizes both the translation course and the eTandem course she is in charge of in the 3rd year of the Bachelor’s program.

Thoughts and advice

The implementation of an eTandem project requires organizational skills and pedagogical collaboration at the international level on the part of the teachers involved.

The provision of different learning materials may reveal certain technological difficulties. On the one hand, these difficulties, current and future, are linked to a certain censorship of the tools on the Chinese mainland side. On the other hand, without UNIGE computer access, Moodle does not allow students to participate in the interactive features and tasks scripted on the platform. As a result, students outside the UNIGE must each obtain computer access to Moodle in order to participate in the course, an extremely time-consuming process at the beginning of each semester for the teacher.

In order to set up such a project, it would first be necessary to revise prejudices about “tandems”, including eTandems, which are often considered as “not serious chitchat”. The teachers are responsible for the participation of the students of their institution and ensure the evaluation at the end of the semester according to their own procedures.

Participants commit to actively participate in the course when they complete the first questionnaire, and the completion of the 8 different themes ensures them a part of the credits of the 2nd year language module. Being able to obtain credits seems to motivate students to participate, especially in Paris, as the courses are included in the curricula in Geneva and Wuhan.

Student feedback

*“I think it would be really important for the teacher to give some indications or advice on how to prepare the exchange. In fact, reading texts that we have prepared beforehand makes us lose the purpose of the exchange: to speak spontaneously and live. So I think the teacher should explain how to prepare the discussion (vocabulary, grammar points) without it taking the form of a fixed text. *

“I was satisfied with the implementation and the progress of this program, some themes are much more complicated than others, especially the environment or personal themes like health. As far as the environment theme is concerned, I would have placed it at the end of the tandem cycle, or not at all, given the difficulty of the theme, which I found not adapted to my level and that of my tandem. It is difficult to find a time slot that works every week. Perhaps a teacher or administrator feedback on our summaries in the forums 30 that scheduling a fixed time for everyone would be easier in the organization between tandem, both parties being very busy all week. It’s hard to find a time slot that works every week.”

“Would it be possible, in the interest of interculturality, to add a theme concerning holidays, in order to open the debate and the explanation of certain national customs? Furthermore, a theme on politeness would also allow to enter into Chinese culture at a concrete level, and would allow to realize the degree of importance of laughter and Confucian morals among today’s youth. These two themes, which could be combined into one, would ensure a significant awareness of the differences in the evolution of the two civilizations. ”