Horizontes (Dec 2011)
Teletandem: Prospects, challenges, and scope of an on-line communication project in PFL
Abstract
This article begins with a brief overview of the objectives of an international project that uses teletandem as a virtual, collaborative and autonomous context for on-line intercultural and multimodal communication in Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL). We, then, move on to analyze the statistical data supplied by the site of the project, attempting to draw on a few inferences that can show the interconnection of the possibilities, difficulties and, above all, the scope of the project that promotes the interest and learning of PFL in various countries. The result of our analysis showed (a) the importance of a site for divulging and expanding the learning of PFL with relative low financial investment; (b) different levels of interest of certain countries in PFL; (c) the importance of establishing and keeping contact with departments of Portuguese in some universities in order to expand the teaching and learning of PFL; and (d) the importance of several project management procedures in order to keep contact, as well as the interest of the Portuguese departments in certain universities abroad regarding on-line collaborative projects with Brazil.
