PFL TEACHER EDUCATION: learning oriented assessment in the teletandem context

Abstract

Despite teletandem practices having been shown as potential contexts for both language learning and teaching, some studies have identified some gaps for teacher education of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL). This paper presents the experience of a course in which the participants took part in teletandem sessions in order to learn and practice a foreign language and experience teaching PFL, read the suggested papers to discuss the features of PFL teaching. Considering the affordances for teacher development in teletandem, the course was carried out through the concept of learning oriented assessment. Therefore, assessment operated as a learning advisor which helped the teacher educators led the pedagogical practice through the answers from Brazilian students to a Self-Assessment/Tracking Teletandem Sheet. As preliminary results, it is possible to indicate some affordances of teletandem for PFL teachers: to create empathy to language practice through telecollaboration, to reflect on the mother tongue as a foreign language and on its implications to the teacher when one teaches PFL, to provide cultural feedback considering diversity and plurality, to practice different types of linguistic feedback regarding the students' culture of learning, and lastly to increase the use of technological resources to language teaching.