Innovation in Language Learning

Teletandem Brasil: Foreign Languages for all [TELLES, 2006] is a research and a pedagogical project that has been carried out at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP, at Assis and at São José do Rio Preto) since 2006 and that allows university students who live in different countries (and are proficient in different languages) to be in contact so that they can learn each other´s languages. The project is theoretically founded on the principles of tandem learning – autonomy, reciprocity, separation of languages, – and has included technological resources and software (Skype, microphone, webcam, internet connection) that enable worldwide communication. The present study focuses on an institutional integrated modality of teletandem [ARANHA; CAVALARI, 2014], which was carried out within a partnership established between Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP at São José do Rio Preto) and University of Georgia. Institutional Integrated teletandem (iiTTD) is guided by the same theoretical principles (autonomy, reciprocity and separation of languages) and entails that teletandem practice is embedded into the foreign language courses at both universities. Therefore, iiTTD practice relies on participants' autonomy and collaboration and, at the same time, is considered mandatory and is assessed by the foreign language teacher, what may seem theoretically incoherent with the tennets of an autonomous and collaborative language learning context. Bearing this in mind, in this paper, we discuss how assessment practice within iiTTD may offer a compromising alternative that integrates both formative and summative purposes of assessment that an institutional modality may require and that, at the same time, does not hinder participants' opportunities for autonomy and collaboration. In order to do so, data collected in the first semester of 2012 is used (video recordings, learner diaries, questionnaires, text production and revision by iiTTD partners, teacher's grades) to illustrate assessment practice in terms of (i) learner's self-assessment, (ii) peer assessment, and (iii) teacher’s assessment.