As classical language courses and language learning apps show deficits in the domain of oral language acquisition, our study investigates tandem learning in social virtual reality (TLSVR) as a means of foreign language learning. We discuss the literature and present results from an international survey among learners of German as a foreign language. We subsequently analyse multimodal tandem conversation data that was collected in the pilot study Hololingo! with a focus on pragmatics. The results sketch a promising path for the new field of TLSVR.