Do Students Share the Same Experience in an Online Language Exchange Programme? – The Chinese-French eTandem Case

Résumé En

This article presents the findings of an eTandem Chinese-French exchange course during two academic years, the year 2010-2011 when the course was not credited, and the year 2011-2012 when the course was credited in one university but not in the other. It focuses on the students’ perspective about the language exchange experience. The participants are second year language students from both universities – Level B1-B2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR, 2001). The course includes theme-based asynchronous learning activities in the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle of theme-based exercises, and writing a forum post in their mother tongue for language partners, as well as task-based synchronous oral communication via Skype. A course evaluation was done after each academic year and the data were collected. The findings showed that the fact that the course was credited really affected the students’ appreciation of the exchange experience, even though it was only credited in one side.