Acquiring complex grammatical forms can be a challenge for foreign language students. An in- teresting question is if native speakers can assist learners in that process. Online exchanges have been used since the 1990s starting with so called tandem projects (Little, 2001) and provide an excellent opportunity for students to learn from speakers of the target language (Alred, Byram, & Fleming, 2003; O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006). However, as Dooly (2001) highlighted, one has to be careful when setting up such an exchange. In particular, finding participants with matching levels of proficiency, setting clear instructions in regard to tasks, monitoring the use of vocabulary and, most of all, providing feedback at all times are key factors that need careful consideration. Fur- thermore, Stockwell (2003) pointed out that a successful interaction of participants might depend on topic choice as well as topic organization in terms of threads.
Interestingly, most studies carried out on online exchanges deal with cultural aspects, vocabu- lary or colloquialisms. It seems that the opportunity to improve grammar is often avoided. The few studies dealing with grammar, however, have shown that native speakers can in fact assist learners. For example, Belz (2004) investigated the use of da-compounds, and Belz and Vyatkina (2005) the use of modal particles in German. These two studies tracked the usage of da-compounds and mod- al particles respectively over the duration of an exchange between students of German at an Amer- ican university and students of English at a German university. They reported that, over time, stu- dents of German at the American university started using those compounds and modal particles correctly in their writing.