Inside my class

I thought I'll make an exception here by talking about my interesting recent project at the University. A lot of people have been asking me what I work on. Well, here's the thing. I work on Tandem Learning. Tandem learning is not a complex concept to explain. I place a French speaker and an English speaker together. They respectively want to learn English and French. So they speak to each other for an hour in French and for an hour in English. They correct each other, encourage each other and help each other. It is a rather relaxed, cool way of learning a language. Tandem participants talk about anything and everything. But sometimes they need help. So I suggest subjects, give them ideas etc. A lot of research has been done on this for quite some time now. And, lucky as I am, I have one of the pioneers of Tandem learning in the UK as one of my research guides. My research guide on the linguistic side is a well-known linguist from France.
I am particularly interested in measuring the progress that students make when they participate in a tandem. Universities are getting global. Tandem learning can be helpful in setting up autonomous learning centres where students get together and learn a language as is the case at several universities including Sheffield and LSE.
My work is coordinating the tandem, training students in the basic rules of tandem learning, helping them reach their optimum tandem potential and being there for them when they face issues, linguistic, intercultural or otherwise. I also design activities that participants must complete in their tandem pairs to help structure and classify the information that they get.
I am not particularly interested in online tandems. I have been an in-class teacher. I like the presence of students yapping away. But I guess those are personal choices. And hence, although everything "online" is now the buzzword in teaching, I am going to stay put in my real classroom for now and see how interactions happen!
So there. That's what I do. And I love it.