Mediation in ELT: what, where, and how?

When we talk about language skills, we normally mean listening and reading, speaking and writing. 

But let's think about the situations when you need to take notes of what you heard or summarise the text you have read, or write an abstract in English of a paper in your native language. In this case, you need more than one skill or work with more than one language. 

And all these situations require a different set of skills, called mediation.

In this article, we are going to look at what mediation in ELT is, how it can be developed in the lessons of English and why it is important to develop it. 

Cambridge Dictionary defines mediation as “the process by which someone tries to end a disagreement by helping the two sides to talk about and agree on a solution”. 

In other words, there is a gap between two parties that should be filled. If we transfer this concept to the ELT settings, we can talk about the communication gap that should be filled.

And the learner acts as “a social agent who creates bridges and helps to convey meaning.” If we take this definition literally, we can talk about translation when two speakers of different languages need a third party to reach understanding. 

Alternatively, these gaps can be caused by social or cultural differences, and a person may need to act as a mediator to resolve a conflict or reach a consensus in order to fill a gap. 

The gaps in communication may  also be filled by, for instance, rendering or summarising the text in writing or orally. As we can see, mediation involves the integrated use of more than one skill and/ or more than one language.

CEFR describes the following mediation skills: mediating a text (note-taking, explaining data, processing or translating the text, analysing and expressing a personal response), mediating concepts (facilitating and managing interaction, collaborating to construct meaning), and mediating communication (facilitating communication in pluricultural situations, delicate situations and informal situations with friends and colleagues).

Let’s get back to the ELT context and see where we can integrate mediation in the lesson. 

Here are some activities and situations where your learners actually make use of mediation:

Having looked at the common activities that promote mediation, let’s discuss how you can develop mediation skills. 

As you can see, a big number of mediation-related activities are collaborative by their nature. 

So see if you can make emphasis on pair and group work where learners are encouraged to explain the text or some language to their peers; in other words, doing peer teaching. 

It will enable them to paraphrase and simplify the text. 

See if you can choose the materials that correspond to the learners’ age, social and cultural background, and interests. 

Since the learners may do such activities for the first time, it is useful to demonstrate how to do them. 

What is more, make sure you equip your learners with useful language and phrases they may need to perform the task. 

If the activities are new to the learners, see if you can provide more support. 

For instance, for negotiations or role-plays, you can use graphic organisers so that your learners can see the structure and follow it.

For example, at the beginning, it can be a summary of a text and then you can move on to jig-saw tasks and more complex integration tasks where learners should summarise the information from a reading and listening test and evaluate it. 

Besides, you can start working with the text containing some concrete ideas and progress to discussing abstract notions. 

As mediation often includes bridging the gap in some delicate situations in various social and cultural contexts, see if you can use role-plays and debates which centre around resolving disagreements and conflicts. It will require the learners to develop adequate skills or at least, will raise awareness of social and cultural differences and the necessity of being sensitive in such situations.

The development of mediation skills can enable your learners to communicate more effectively with people from different social and cultural backgrounds, and overall, have a better understanding of such differences. 

Moreover, learners can become better at collaborating and cooperating with others in various situations and sociocultural contexts.

Last but not least is that learners with well-developed mediation skills can be better ready for real-life situations and act in the capacity of mediators and overall, be effective communicators.