Tandem Language Learning Through a Cross-Cultural Keypal Project (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION A keypal project has been conducted every fall since 2001 between students in a third-year Japanese language course at the University of Alberta (UA), Canada, and students studying English at Doshisha Women's College (DWC) in Japan. This communication project, which we will call the UA-DWC project in the rest of the paper, aims to provide students with an opportunity to freely communicate in the language they are learning. Through message exchanges on a discussion board, students ask and answer questions regarding common topics, such as university life, relationships and marriage. The UA-DWC project takes the form of tandem language learning and is expected to provide an environment for incidental learning whereby students gain linguistic skills while being engaged in meaning-focused exchanges. As such, the project has been sustainable enough to be incorporated as part of the curriculum of the regular course at each institution.