Innovation in Language Learning

Developing mediation education though a FL is a new challenge facing ELT methodology and to meet this challenge we need to have a clear methodological vision of how the learner becomes able to act as a mediator in the world where English is a lingua franca. This paper looks at different types of mediation in English from the perspectives of the globalized cooperation and communication in our culturally diverse world, it gives an insight into major sociocultural roles that the learner is expected to act during ELL and in real life with the view to the level of his language command. Among these roles are: a) a cultural casual observer at A1+ level; b) a communicative ethnographer (M. Byram) at   A2 level; c) a cross-cultural collaborator at B1 level; d) a cross-cultural mediator at B2 level; e)  an intercultural mediator at C1 level and e) a pluricultural mediator at C2 level. The paper argues that all of them need to be framed in terms of mediating knowledge and skills (information skills, interpreting skills, behavioral verbal and nonverbal skills, relational and reflective skills) relating to different areas of intercultural communication & it shows how to do that in practice. If broadly speaking, the learner as a pluricultural mediator should be also educated to be impartial and unbiased when facilitating cultural understanding and cooperation among participants of intercultural communication. S/he is expected to be a person who is able: 1) to act as pluricultural intermediary between culturally different interlocutors, helping them to overcome sociocultural barriers & cultural prejudices and to destroy cultural stereotypes; 2) to create comfortable pluricultural space for interlocutors from different ethnic / national, regional, religious, geopolitical communities and social subcultures in order to let them interact & cooperate fully; 3) to use  appropriate pluricultural repertoire (CEFR/CV) and exploit it in pluricultural situations of academic, business, professional and science communication. The paper ends by outlining graded problem-solving activities for developing the English learner as a pluricultural mediator.

Keywords: mediation education, sociocultural roles, ELT, CEFR;