​Students' Opinions

The excerpts below are a few answers taken from an evaluation questionnaire after ten weeks of teletandem sessions. Many of the students' opinions do not reflect those of the project.
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What did you think of your teletandem experience?

• I think Teletandem is a really interesting and spectacular tool for those who want to learn a foreign language, because one really gets to develop their autonomy in learning a language. It is not about someone pushing you to do meaningless activities and boring exercises anymore, you get to participate, to find out how your cognitive system works when it comes to learn a language. Besides, I think there is a more "real" cultural interchange and also, the role of a professor mediating the session through challenges and reflexive exercises about language, culture, society is simply marvelous.
• It was the most different way that I had ever tried to learn English. It was interesting because we were free to talk about any subject, not being restricted to the grammatical rules of English language schools.
• It is a more relaxed way to practice the language, and I believe that because it is a more informal conversation, we learn more new words than in a conventional English class.
• I really enjoyed the experience of learning / perfecting a foreign language through Teletandem, because I had the opportunity to be in direct contact with a native English speaker for a long time and it was very good for me. In addition to the exchange of experiences and knowledge with him, there is an atmosphere of camaraderie with the stranger that pleases me very much because, over time, the one who was once a stranger helping us to understand a language becomes a closer person, despite the distance, and it helped me to draw out me and unlock my English.

What did you think of your teletandem partner?

• I really enjoyed my teletandem partner because he is a very friendly person and he was always patient with me. I have been studying the foreign language for a short period, and he corrected me effectively through the Skype chat. That allowed our conversation not to be interrupted, and it prevented me from understanding his corrections in a wrong way.
• My partner and I got along well from the first contact, though at times we ran out of topics and had many repetitive conversations.
• My partner was very cool and he was interested in speak portuguese and when he had to listen to me. I heard argues of others colleagues in teletandem that the partner had not patiente to listen or teach english, but with my partner was easy and we always have something to talk about.
• She was a very nice and comprehensive person! She is not my age, she's older, and still we had amazing talks. I'm going to miss her a lot. During the sessions, I felt we were getting closer and confident and then she was speaking portuguese even better.
• My teletandem partner and I have been getting along since the first session. I feel like we clicked right away. He is a very interesting, fun, open-minded and intelligent person, we never run out of topics of conversation. It's been a really nice partnership.
• My partner and I got along since the beginning of the interactions. He was kind and fun to talk to, and we got to exchange many fun facts about our cultures and our lives. Eventually we started having contact on another platform (Snapchat), through which we sent eachother photos of subjects we thought to be relevant for our understanding of each other's cultures. It was a very rich and pleasant process, and I believe my partner played an important role for such outcome.
• I identified myself a lot with my Teletandem partner, without a doubt. We love to talk and listen, so we give much attention to each other. We are interested in several common themes and even with respect to the different activities that each of us have and are differnt from each other, we thought it was nice to share between us. I thought my partner was very friendly, polite, intelligent, caring and an extrovert. I do not have complaints about him.

Which were the most positive points about your teletandem process?

• Among the positive points I can point out the very opportunity to interact with someone who, in fact, has the language you study as his mother tongue. No matter our teacher's efforts, many things related to the daily use of the language only permeate the speech of those who use it all the time. This is the case of slang and expressions. Even though they may be taught in the classroom, the best way to understand their use is by placing them within the context of everyday speech. They will be learned more easily through a situation such as that of the tandem.
• The strengths of the interactions were some fluency and confidence that I developed in the target language. I had great difficulty speaking that language due to the fact that I had already learned others. The teletandem made to risk speaking, losing my fear of making mistakes. This process [the teletandem process] helped me to improve my skills in this language.
• The way that we learned the foreign language was the most important thing: it is better to gain knowledge when you are having fun (distracted) than when you have to push yourself to learn.
• Getting to deal with the fact that my English accent is horrible but still understandable. It made me realize that I do need to speak in English more often, considering that I never was in a English/language school (just my elementary and high school classes).
• I learned some different things about other cultures, because my partner lives in USA but is from Egypt.
• We can talk about issues of interest to both, and these issues can flow without the pressure of being assessed (which happens in a more light way). I think the factor that triggers learning in teletandem is its internal motivation, for me, the power to help a colleague who is interested in my native language and still be able to exercise my foreign language of interest.
• Teletandem helped me to be less shy while I'm talking to someone on skype, it helped me to develop my English, I had the opportunity to keep in touch with a Brazilian that has lived his whole life in the US and is completely different from us, his culture is completely American.

Which were the most negative points about your teletandem experience?

• The connection with skype, in the last interactions the connection was bad.
• The lack of responsibility of my partner and the fact that I practically never received any feedback on my speaking mistakes.
• I think it's a little time, 50 minutes it's not enough. Because, when you learn and speak all words the right way it's over your time you needed switch the language. And I think the teacher should make a suggestion about the subject that we gonna talk at least the five official classes.
• Teletandem only have negative points when your partner is not willing to help you with your learning, or is not willing to be polite with you.
• The negative points are the noise and the bad connection. In my case, I had only one partner, but my friends complained about the lack of a stable partner. That [the change of partners] was a big negative point for the development of dialogue, because the interaction always remains in initial conversations, that is, self-introductions and presentations only.
• In my opinion, the most negative point was the duration of teletandem. I wish it was more than five weeks.
• I wish I could have helped more with my partner's Portuguese. I feel I could have done more, but it was not very clear for me how to do that and how my partner wanted my intervention in his language skills. When we talked about how we wanted to be corrected, he said he would rather have me write down his mistakes. However, we rarely had time to talk about them once the interaction was over. Next time, I'll try to organize the time of the session in case the other partner seems to be really interested in having feedback.