Learner Autonomy and Tandem Learning

The writer defined the 3 approaches of learner autonomy in his research, the individual-cognitive, the social-interactive and the experimental-participatory perspectives. These 3 approaches related to the learner oneself, the peers and the choice of tools respectively. Then he mentioned the tandem learning which is to search a L2 learner of our mother tongue to teach us his/her L1 and at the same time, we teach him/her our L1. I think this is interesting but there are a lot of difficulties. First, to find someone who has the need to learn our L1 is not easy. At the same time, he/she needs to have similar interests, age and maybe background as ourselves will be very challenging. Not to mention to do it by oneself, even with the help of the school, this is not an easy match. I remember years ago, the school I worked before tried to match the junior students with foreigners so ao to form something like a pen-pal scheme through email. Of course, at the beginning students were very responsive at sending email to their foreign pen friend. However, weeks later, their responsive manner became lukewarm. As it is really difficult to share anything for long if our cultures are different. To foreigners, they may not be interested in your piles of tests and tons of homework. Also, some students treated the pen friend as a "dictionary" or an "answer-telling machine". Once they had problems in their homework, particularly English, they sent their pen friend an email. In such case, how can they learn better English? Technology is improving but under sharp differences of culture, to learn form a westerner is not so easy through technology.