The use of project pedagogy in teletandem sessions

Abstract

This article describes an online language learning context in which teletandem sessions (Telles, 2009) have been integrated into the syllabus of a Modern Languages Degree Course at the Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG), Brazil, as an internationalization at home action. In the second semester of 2021, the subject “Aprendizaje de Portugués y Español en Teletandem” was offered with the participation of ten Brazilian students who were majoring in Spanish at the UFG, nine Argentine students from different undergraduate courses from the Universidad de Cuyo, and one undergraduate student from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. In this virtual learning context, the Brazilians could teach Portuguese to the Argentinians and improve their fluency in Spanish through interactions with them. They also had to develop a project about a chosen theme and work on it, considering the Brazilian and Argentine contexts. The data for this case study (Johnson, 1992) was obtained through video recordings of the interviews of two pairs of students. The results show that the participants could learn an additional language, improve their intercultural skills, and talk about real-world problems in Brazil and Argentina, like the lack of water in some cities, the devaluation of women’s work, etc. The students’ reflections on these topics made them more socially aware of living in a more harmonious world where diversity is highly valued.