Reciprocal learning is a practice that has been indefinitely present in language teaching and learning but undervalued in theoretical studies of applied linguistics and educational linguistics. It was developed in the late 1980s by Erik Hawkins (Hawkins, E. W. Modern languages in the curriculum (pp. 190–195). Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Vivian Cook (Modern English Teacher, 16(3/4):48–53, 1989) and has remained a scientifically unexplored concept, although it could be a great help to didactics for language teaching and learning, especially for teenagers, a category of learners eager for authentic relationships. On the other hand, social and developmental psychologists, anthropologists, and political scientists invite us to consider the basic psychological mechanism of reciprocity, possibly rooted in evolution, and its importance for health and well-being (Buunk and Schaufeli, European Review of Social Psychology, 10(1):259–291, 1999). Our proposal is a pedagogy (the Contact-Based Language Learning and Teaching Method, Cavaion, I. M. Let’s contact! An introductory study to CoBLaLT. Univerzitetna založba Annales, 2016; Cavaion, I. M. Guida alla Didattica del Contatto [CoBLaLT teachers’ guide]. Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče Koper, Annales ZRS, 2019; 2020, 2021) based on the belief that reciprocity needs to be valued more, i.e., we as teachers and researchers of applied linguistics need to provide and foster a sense of mutual exchange, personal enrichment, and social, human growth in language learning. The consequence of such an approach is in a reduction of authority/power (language status), a shift and orientation of focus from communication as information exchange to communication for relationship building, tasks to be accomplished together in a collaborative and cooperative learning process, complicity and sharing of common interests, i.e., language focused on a lexicon useful for young people, usually excluded from textbooks. At the moment the methodology is shifting from the concept of contact as a social phenomenon (theories of contact between groups) to a conceptualization of contact as a more complex interpersonal encounter, in which we refer to responsibility, care, otherness and reciprocity as core principles and goals of language learning, very inspired by K. Kramsch’s thoughts (2019). Our scientific experience has developed in the last ten years in the context of cross-border contact of mainstream primary schools settled in the Italian and Slovenian border area, but in this paper, we argue in favour of the possibility, if not the necessity, of incorporating the principle of reciprocity into any kind of language teaching and learning in an educational and training context such as school.