ИСТИНА

The first part of the paper observes the development and the current state of the tandem language learning in Russia in the university context including tandem summer schools for native speakers of Russian, German and English in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. The observation includes the analyzes of advantages and the main difficulties of the tandem language learning in Russia based on the current situation in the Russian universities as well as feedbacks of both participants and educators. Tandem language learning in Russia is mostly institutional; generally it requires the physical presence of participants and is conducted in the form of summer schools, as Austrian-Russian and German-Russian summer schools in Pushkin Institute of Russian Language (Moscow) and Dobrolubov State Linguistic University (Nizhni Novgorod). The collaboration between tandem partners is aimed mostly at cultural issues and less on developing basic communication skills. Our survey showed that though the Russian students do not have enough opportunities to participate in tandem courses, they know about tandem language learning and would like to take part in such projects organized by foreign institutions. The second part of the paper presents the experiences and results of institutional teletandem experiments organized and conducted at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The first one of the conducted projects describes the experience of collaborative translation in institutional teletandem. The participants of teletandem were students doing translation degree in Russia (Lomonosov Moscow State University, State University of Pedagogy) and their opposite numbers from Germany (University of Mainz) and Austria (University of Graz, Center of Translation Studies in Vienna), so Russian and German languages were exchanged. The average level of knowledge of a foreign language of students was B2 according to CEFR. The teletandem project was held for two months (8 weeks) of parallel peer and group work. Peer work included the translation of news, documents and technical instructions to a foreign language with further mutual correction and creation of glossaries. Group work included translation of fiction into the mother tongue. For the fiction book part we took the novel “Goof Chronicles” of the Russian writer Pavel Sanaev and the novel “The Winter is Good for Fishes” of the Austrian writer Anna Weidenholzer. Along with practical translation participants dealt with some academic issues as methods of text analysis. The recommended minimal frequency of individual tandem meetings was once a week with recommended minimal duration of 1.5 hours for each language. Along with individual meetings participants should have posted their translations on Wikispaces and collaborate in group discussions and webinars (one hour per week). The aim of the second experiment was the preparation of the same participants to such certificate exams as TestDaF (German as a Foreign Language) and TRKI (Russian as a Foreign language) in teletandem. The teletandem lasted 4 weeks with recommended 1.5 hours of oral training for each language and 1.5 hours of writing training weekly. During the project tandem partners concentrated on Writing and Speaking, solved assignments posted by tutors on Wikispaces, invented their own situations close to the examination context. At the end of the projects participants rated that experience as very useful for their professional development; they also noticed that they will consult their partners after the end of the projects.