Our students are mainly from 8 - 12, yet we have some other students below 18, and they are better at understanding than expressing.
If possible, how do you think this way:
Preparation Stage:
1. Information Card: Have our students who are interested in this program prepare some information they want to tell.(Photos, families, food, music, movies, super-star, anecdote ... etc, e-mail address or mail address is required.) with a word to their Pen Pal(s). We keep these cards in our hand temporarily, instead of delivery them immediately.
2. Question Sheet: They will prepare a set of questions that they concern most (I think 10 might be okay, could be about the country, or could be about the Pen Pal) with the NAME of this student.
Teachers � Stage:
1. Deliver each student �s Question Sheet to every participants.
2. Collect those Question Sheets and sort them according to the NAMEs and type them in as .doc or .docx or .PDF files.
Matching Stage:
1. We teachers exchange all the collected and sored Question Sheets and deliver them to the right students.(Name corresponding.)
2. They will chose their favorite feed-back(s) as their Pen Pal(s) and we can give the corresponding information card(s) to them then.
3. There they go the first mail or e-mail or postcard.
May be you have better suggestions, please let me know.
Keep in touch!