The rhetorical structure of the first Teletandem Oral Session

ABSTRACT This study focuses on teletandem, a virtual and collaborative learning environment in which university students who are learning a foreign language meet regularly via synchronous communication tools in order to learn the language of one another (Telles 2006). In this article, we aim to investigate the rhetorical structure of the first 15 minutes of ten initial teletandem oral sessions (iTOS), namely, the first skype meeting between the partners. The results point to the standardization of discourse in the iTOS and highlights the association between rhetorical structure and learning scenario (Foucher 2010).