Introduction

The most widespread form of collaborative language learning in Europe today is Tandem learning. The practice of working in partnership is probably as old as foreign language learning itself, but Tandem was first established as a formal pedagogic concept in the late 1960s, in courses organised by the German-French youth exchange organisation, the Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk. In Adult Education, one of the early experiments in the field, initiated by the Volkshochschule München in 1973, brought together skilled workers from the Turkish community and German social workers and teachers. Pioneers of Tandem learning in Higher Education have included the Sprachinstitut Tübingen, which has been running German/French Tandem courses for students of social work since 1973 and the Institut für Deutsche Sprache of the bilingual University of Fribourg (Switzerland), which has arranged more than 100 German/French Tandem partnerships per year since 1982–1983. Finally, Intensive German/Spanish Tandem courses were organised in the Universities of Bochum and Oviedo from 1986 onwards (see Herfurth, 1993: 73–97).

Among the first English-speaking beneficiaries of Tandem learning were personnel from a British military base in Bielefeld (Nordrhein-Westfalen) where a German/English Tandem programme, running from 1991, paired members of the base (aged 18–54) with German secondary school pupils in their 9th year of study at the local Realschule. The military personnel were beginners, who received an initial four-week intensive course in German. Thereafter, the programme involved two whole-day sessions, held first on the army base, then – one week later – in the school. Participants learnt to talk about their partners, the town or region they came from and their place of study or employment. They also took part in role-plays based on common everyday activities (see Herfurth, 1993: 253 for details).