Taking information, understanding it, and then explaining it to others is something we all have to do in our daily lives. It’s part of what we call “mediation” skills, and it’s a fantastic skill set to encourage in the language classroom. It’s also become a really hot topic in language-teaching communities around the world.
Why is it important to teach mediation skills?
Practising mediation skills is a great way for learners to increase their confidence. This is because mediation skills require learners to use English skills that are needed in the real world. For example, these skills are especially useful in higher education settings.
We often think about language learning in terms of reception (reading and listening) production (speaking and writing), and interaction. Mediation takes interaction one step further as learners have to take content and change it to suit a different context.
You are probably already teaching mediation skills to your learners without realising, but here are three things to help you integrate them further in the classroom:
Understand what mediation skills are in the real world
The first step is to understand what mediation skills actually are in the real world and work out ways of bringing them into the classroom. It’s always good to start with a definition, and the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) considers mediation to be required when a communications gap presents itself. So, for example, it could be when two speakers do not know each other’s language and require a third language to mediate the message. These communication gaps can also occur when two people have different varieties of language, different levels of formality or technical language and cultural differences. In each case the person playing the role of mediator has to listen to the information, understand it and then repurpose it for successful communication.
Let’s look at some real-life scenarios which require mediation skills for success:
- You have to explain how the school timetable works to a new class.
- You’re on holiday with your parents and, as you know a bit of the language of the place you’re visiting, you’ve become the ‘official translator’ for the rest of the family!
- You’re passing on the latest gossip amongst your friends!
- You’re at university and your lecturer has asked you to look at an English research paper and summarise it to your study group in your home language.
- You’re at work and you have taken a detailed safety brief that you have to explain to other colleagues in the team.
Start small with fun classroom activities
Secondly, it’s important to remember, that whilst mediation may be second nature to many, it takes a unique set of skills to pull it off successfully. For this reason, we would suggest you start with small steps in the classroom to help encourage and motivate your learners.
Here are a few classroom activities you can try today:
- Encourage your students to develop mediation skills by watching English-speaking news and films and then summarise the important points in English or their own language to the rest of the class. This can be a really fun activity because you can use one of the latest blockbusters or a big piece of trending news.
- Encourage students to skim-read tourist information literature for a town or city, then ask their classmates about their interests so they can plan a day trip for them.
- Ask working-age students to simplify key terms or jargon used in their workplace so a classmate can understand them. The classmate then has to explain the terms to a third classmate, who then relays what they’ve learnt back to the first student to see if their understanding is correct!
Develop a long-term strategy for mediation
To develop a more detailed long-term strategy for encouraging mediation skills in the classroom I’d recommend you start by getting a good understanding of the different elements of mediation. Then you can plan some suitable classroom activities and keep a checklist and log to record learners’ progress. First, you should look at the support materials we’ve produced to help you start encouraging mediation skills in your own classroom. For example, our teaching guide Mediation: What it is, how to teach it and how to assess it and our Facebook live session are great ways to find the best strategies you can use to teach and assess mediation skills. If you want to dig a bit deeper, you can look at the Council of Europe’s material on this in the CEFR companion volume, which describes mediation skills as:
- mediating a text, such as relaying specific information.
- mediating concepts, such as communicating in a group.
- mediating communication, such as acting as an intermediary in informal situations.
Obviously, strategies come in all shapes and sizes but the most important thing you need to do is to make sure your approach injects some fun into the process!