Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing 9781783094127

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
2. The Notion of Mediation: An Interdisciplinary Overview
3. Theorising Mediation
4. Mediation Tasks
5. Mediation Strategies
6. Mediation Strategy Use and Task Type
7. Mediation Strategy Use and Proficiency Level
8. Conclusions and Suggestions for Future Research
9. Teaching and Testing Mediation: A Means for Promoting Multilingualism
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3: Types of Sentences and Clauses
References
Index

Citation preview

Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Series Editor: Professor Viv Edwards, University of Reading, Reading, Great Britain Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of identity and power, community and culture. This series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION: 43

Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing

Maria Stathopoulou

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Stathopoulou, Maria, author. Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing/Maria Stathopoulou. New Perspectives on Language and Education: 43 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Interlanguage (Language learning) 2. Interlanguage (Language learning) —Ability testing. 3. Language and languages — Study and teaching. 4. Language and languages —Ability testing. 5. Languages in contact. 6. Code switching (Linguistics) I. Title. P118.23.S838 2015 401’.93–dc23 2015015297 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-411-0 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2015 Maria Stathopoulou. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/ or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services Limited. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

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“Όταν πιστεύουμε σε κάτι ανύπαρκτο με πάθος, τελικά το δημιουργούμε. Ό,τι δεν συνέβη ποτέ, είναι ό,τι δεν ποθήσαμε αρκετά.” ― Νίκος Καζαντζάκης, Έλληνας συγγραφέας και φιλόσοφος “By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.” ― Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer and philosopher

Contents

Preface 1

xi

Introduction Focus of the Book What is Interlingual Mediation and Who is an Interlingual Mediator? What Does the Ability to Mediate Involve? The Research The Context Overview of the Chapters

2 4 7 10 12

2

The Notion of Mediation: An Interdisciplinary Overview Introduction The Origins of the Term ‘Mediation’ The Meaning of ‘Mediation’ in Different Disciplines Mediation in Foreign Language Education Conclusion

15 15 15 16 28 34

3

Theorising Mediation Introduction The Practice of Mediation in Today’s Multicultural Milieus Mediation as Translanguaging Practice Mediation as Social Practice Mediation as a Dialogic and Interactive Activity Concluding Remarks

37 37 38 40 50 52 57

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1 1

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Contents

4

Mediation Tasks Introduction What is a Mediation Task? KPG Written Mediation Task Features Across Proficiency Levels: A Systematic Linguistic Description Conclusions

5

61 61 61

65 86

Mediation Strategies Introduction The Term ‘Strategy’: Definitions and Theoretical Considerations The Inventory of Mediation Strategies Towards Exploring Mediation Strategies Conclusion

88 88 89 93 115 130

6

Mediation Strategy Use and Task Type Introduction Mediation Strategy Use and Task Requirements Type A Mediation Strategies Across Tasks Type B Mediation Strategies Across Tasks Concluding Remarks

133 133 134 138 144 145

7

Mediation Strategy Use and Proficiency Level Introduction The Proficiency Level Variable: Quantitative Data Analysis The Proficiency Level Variable: Qualitative Data Analysis Conclusions

147 147 147 153 204

8

Conclusions and Suggestions for Future Research Introduction Research Outcomes, Procedures and Overall Conclusions: A Synopsis Suggestions for Exploiting Research Outcomes: Towards Developing Levelled Mediation Descriptors Suggestions for Further Research

207 207 208 212 214

Contents

9

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Teaching and Testing Mediation: A Means for Promoting Multilingualism Introduction The Changing Landscape in Foreign Language Education Incorporating Mediation in School Programmes and Exam Suites A Final Note

224 233

Appendix 1

235

Appendix 2

249

Appendix 3

257

References

258

Index

303

220 220 221

Preface This book aims to contribute to the rapidly growing fields of multilingualism, multi- and bilingual education and multilingual testing by shedding light on an uncharted area in the field of foreign language teaching and testing – namely translanguaging and in particular one of its forms, mediation between languages – through specially designed, extensive, long-term research. Terms such as ‘translanguaging’, ‘polylanguaging’, ‘metrolingualism’ and ‘code-crossing’, which have recently emerged in the language didactics literature, reflect the growing concern to equip language learners with the ability to move back and forth between languages in order to communicate effectively. In today’s multilingual society, acting as a mediator is a frequent activity of users of more than one language. However, there are very few studies on how people mediate effectively, what strategies they use and what they do and do not do when they act as intermediaries, trying to get across from one language to another, what has been said or written. This is exactly what this book examines. Focusing on cross-language (or interlingual) mediation as translanguaging practice, it attempts to show what interlingual mediation entails, what processes are involved and what challenges the mediator faces. The book offers an empirically grounded definition of mediation as a form of translanguaging and provides an empirically derived model for investigating the practice of written mediation. Interlinguistic mediation is defined through data, and empirically derived tools and methods which may prove useful for further research in the fields of multilingual testing in particular and applied linguistics in general are shared with the reader, offering a new perspective for research in a domain of foreign language education which is as yet poorly investigated. The book also explores – given the nature of mediation (which by definition allows the interplay of languages) – the extent to which it is possible for international language testing bodies that favour monolingual testing, to embrace the idea of assessing test-takers’ mediation competence (i.e. their ability to cross linguistic borders by relaying information from texts written in different languages). Apart from the importance of administering tests which favour interlingual mediation practices, what I ultimately stress is the significance of implementing language programmes which promote the xi

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mingling-of-languages idea and aim at the development of language learners’ effective translanguaging practices. Scholars in the field of applied linguistics – and specifically researchers, postgraduate (and undergraduate) students and other professionals who specialise in issues relevant to translanguaging, multilingualism, the use of mother tongue in the foreign language classroom and multilingual testing – may find something of interest in this book. It is not a handbook or a textbook about mediation, but it provides a great many references for those interested in further enquiry into this topic. As previously mentioned, it actually presents the results of long-term research into the unexplored topic of mediation and discusses their implications for teaching, testing and for further research. Such findings may provide insights not only to curriculum designers, syllabus and material developers, language testers, policymakers and teachers, but also to future researchers in the field of multilingualism, multilingual testing and foreign language learning. As the book draws readers’ attention to the fluid boundaries between languages, current ‘English-only’ policies may be rethought in light of the findings reported. As the author of this book, my hope is that it will be used by (in-service and pre-service) teachers, teacher trainers, curriculum designers and researchers as a comprehensive guide to important current language issues. There were two major driving forces for this work: on a broad level, the inclusion of mediation as a key activity in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001) (although no illustrative descriptors relevant to mediation had been provided) and on a more local level, the inclusion of mediation tasks in the Greek national foreign language examinations (Kratiko Pistopiitiko Glossomathias; KPG). Particularly referring to the latter, I wish to stress the fact that to date, this exam battery is, to my knowledge, the only one to embrace the idea of assessing mediation and to implement such assessment (also stressed by Dendrinos, 2006, 2007a, 2007b). The uniqueness of this type of high-stakes exam task coupled with the lack of research findings relating to it shaped the definite need for the development of levelled descriptors relevant to mediation. This is why the current piece of research was instigated, supported and, in a sense, funded by the wider KPG project for the exams in English. Employed at the Research Centre for Language Teaching, Testing and Assessment (RCeL)1 of the Faculty of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, to assist the test team which develops standards and evaluation criteria and pretests mediation tasks for the writing and speaking test papers, I was provided with the

Preface

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opportunity and the challenge to undertake systematic mediation task analysis and to investigate test-takers’ performance, on the basis of the mediation tasks, using empirical data. The fact, however, that research in the field was scarce made the endeavour of researching challenging. This work is actually the result of my eight-year active engagement with the particular area of mediation and other relevant areas such as the use of mother tongue in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. While still a postgraduate student at the Faculty of English, University of Athens, my interest and enthusiasm for mediation was so intense that I never stopped investigating it and was constantly involved in different sorts of projects relevant to it. My MA thesis (Stathopoulou, 2009), in which I argued that interlingual mediation is an act of hybridity, was the first step in theorising mediation. During my PhD studies (and afterwards), I frequently published in an attempt to establish a framework for investigating mediation, something which had never been attempted before. One of my most influential papers was ‘Investigating mediation as translanguaging practice in a testing context: Towards the development of levelled mediation descriptors’ (in J. Colpaert, M. Simons, A. Aerts and M. Oberhofer, eds) Proceedings of the International Conference Language Testing in Europe: Time for a New Framework? pp. 209–217, University of Antwerp, 2013) which triggered the interest of researchers and academics in the field of foreign language education. This paper was also significant in the sense that it made me think that writing a book about such uncharted waters would be an exciting trip. Since then, new publications have come to light (e.g. ‘Task dependent translanguaging performance: An empirical study in a testing context’, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2015; ‘From “languaging” to “translanguaging”: Reconsidering foreign language teaching and testing through a multilingual lens’ in 2014 and ‘The linguistic characteristics of KPG written mediation tasks across levels’ in 2013).

Acknowledgements None of the above would be possible without my mentor, Professor Bessie Dendrinos, who was also my supervisor of two theses, my employer at the RCeL and the only person to inspire me not only to draw attention to this area, but also to work with passion throughout my studies. Her pioneering thoughts about the creative integration of students’ first language (L1) in the classroom since the 1980s, her paper entitled ‘Mediation in communication, testing and teaching’ (2006 in the Journal of Applied Linguistics) and some of her insightful presentations about mediation as

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social practice were the inspiring forces for me to further explore the particular area. Being the founder and the director of the RCeL, she gave me the opportunity to gain significant experience in different areas of foreign language didactics and get involved in a wide variety of projects, many of which had been funded through the European Commission and state funds. At this point, it is important to express my gratitude to two other members of the Faculty of English, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. I am truly grateful for the help I have received through the years from Assistant Professor E. Karavas and Associate Professor B. Mitsikopoulou. A member of my supervising committee during my PhD studies, Dr Karavas’ encouraging words in relation to my work gave me the strength to continue. There have been many times when I remember feeling disheartened and stumped, but a meeting with her always reinvigorated my enthusiasm. Dr Mitsikopoulou always kept herself informed about my progress and when I needed her, she was always there with her enlightening suggestions and support. I would also like to acknowledge the academic and technical support I received from the RCeL. The data provided by the RCeL were a critical part of this work, as has been explained in the book. I also owe special thanks to my best friend, Dimitra Touloumi, for encouraging me to pursue this research project in the first place, for her loyalty and for her constant encouragement in my academic work throughout our adult life. I also wish to deeply thank my partner in life, Christos Balioukos, for his unconditional and sincere love. He has always been there for me to lean on and has stood by me through good times and bad. Finally, my very special thanks go to my parents, Kostas and Aspasia, for their love and constant encouragement. They are the reason that I have enjoyed so many opportunities in life and that I am in a position to write this book. Maria Stathopoulou February 2015

Note The RCeL is responsible for preparing the KPG English language exams. Its basic aim is to provide support for various projects and programmes involving language teaching, testing and assessment at the University of Athens and other educational settings, research centres and/or institutions in Greece and other EU member states. Information is available at http://rcel.enl.uoa.gr/rcel/.

1 Introduction Focus of the Book Our contemporary reality is characterised by the unavoidable mingling of languages in the different spheres of everyday life. And this is why different bi- or multilingual practices, such as translanguaging, polylanguaging, crosslanguaging, code-switching and code-mixing, have raised interest within the fast-growing field of multilingual studies. Within this environment, questions have emerged about when, why and how people make constructive use of the resources they have available to communicate and create socially purposeful meanings. It is because of the concern regarding the type of skills and strategies that one needs to participate effectively in today’s multilingual and superdiverse1 societies (cf. Hornberger, 2007; Hornberger & Link, 2012) that multilingual practices have also attracted the attention of scholars in the fields of foreign language learning, teaching and assessment. These scholars are increasingly interested in investigating multilingual competences and skills, in order to approach foreign language teaching and testing differently – i.e. in ways that will cater to the new and immediate communication needs of members of the new multilingual environments, which impose new realities, challenges and demands on language users. Cross-language (or interlingual) mediation,2 with which this book is concerned, is one of these communicative practices directly linked to the emergence of multilingual and multicultural societies. Speakers around the globe are continuously called on to act as mediators, i.e. to use more than one language to bridge communication gaps between speakers of different languages who are unable to directly communicate with one another. In the field of foreign language teaching, learning and assessment, mediation became a legitimate object of concern through its inclusion in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning, Assessment – henceforth CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001). This important document, whose basic purpose is ‘the provision of objective criteria for describing language proficiency … [in order to] facilitate the mutual recognition of qualifications gained in different learning contexts… and [hence] aid European mobility’ (Council of Europe, 2001: 1), offers detailed 1

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Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing

descriptors illustrating what language users can (or should be able to) do, in each of the six levels of language proficiency (A1–C2), with regard to reading and listening comprehension, and written and spoken production/ interaction. The problem is, however, that despite the fact that the CEFR has put mediation forward as an important aspect of language users’ proficiency, it provides no benchmarked illustrative descriptors (or can-do statements) (cf. Alderson, 2007; Little, 2007; North, 2007). This omission, due mainly to the lack of data about learner mediation performance, which would allow a description of mediatory communication at each level of proficiency, has been a significant incentive for the research presented in this book. Given that no illustrative descriptors for the mediatory use of language are available in the CEFR, this particular language activity has seldom been included in foreign language curricula or featured in classroom activities. In addition, there are very few studies on how people mediate effectively - i.e. what strategies they use and what they do or do not do when they act as intermediaries trying to get what has been said or written in one language across to another. This is exactly what this book examines: Placed within a wider context of ongoing research conducted in Europe for the purposes of setting standards for language learning and assessment (cf. Alderson et al., 2004; Green, 2010; Krumm, 2007; Trim, 2012) and focusing on interlingual mediation as translanguaging practice, this book attempts to show what interlingual mediation entails, what processes are involved and what challenges the mediator faces with the ultimate aim being to help policymakers, educators and testers develop frameworks for the development and/or assessment of mediation competence.

What is Interlingual Mediation and Who is an Interlingual Mediator? In this book, interlingual mediation is seen as both (i) a form of translanguaging which involves the interplay between languages and (ii) a communicative undertaking which entails the purposeful selection of information by the mediator from a source text in one language and the relaying of this information into another language (target text), with the intention of bridging communication gaps between interlocutors (who do not share the same language). Interlingual mediation, in other words, involves the interpretation of meanings in a text articulated in one language and the making of new meanings, on the basis of the ‘old’, appropriate for the situational context but in another language, as

Introduction

3

Dendrinos (2014) would aptly put it. Certain meanings and information in the source text are not only transferred to the target text but they are also transformed in order to fit the new context of the target text. The process can actually be said to be ‘a matter of recontextualisation – a movement from one context to another’ (Fairclough, 2003: 51). Furthermore, as stated by Bernstein (1990), when parts of texts are relocated through recontextualisation, they are often subject to textual change, such as simplification, condensation, elaboration and refocusing, also cited in Linell (1998: 145). Recontextualisation is defined by Linell (1998: 145) as the dynamic transfer-and-transformation of something from one discourse/text-in-context to another. He moves on to argue that recontextualisation involves ‘the extrication of some part or aspect from a text or discourse or from a genre of texts or discourses and the fitting of this part or aspect into another context, i.e., another text or discourse’. This movement of meanings from one text to another, and the creation of new ones definitely entails certain decisions on the part of the mediator, which need to be compatible with the conventions of the target text. Furthermore, in order to achieve his/her communicative goal, he/she also needs to put mediation strategies into effect and mediate between two different linguistic codes as will be explained later. It has, however, to be stressed that it is not the source text itself that is transformed in the new (situational) context – this actually occurs in cases of translation, which in this book is sharply distinguished from the practice of mediation. In contrast, in the process of interlingual mediation, only extracted and relayed source meanings are transformed in order to be compatible with the conventions of the new context of situation. Each time that parts of a text and source meanings are used in another text (and thus in a different context), the source content is recontextualised, and is thereby given new meaning in the new context, a procedure that sometimes goes unnoticed. An analogous example of this process can be found in the field of medicine, where a doctor selects only certain pertinent information contained in the results of a patient’s blood test and then transfers/transforms the information and adapts certain meanings to the new situational context by simplifying or else popularising his/her discourse in order to convey relevant meanings to a patient. The mediator is viewed as a plurilingual social actor actively participating in the intercultural communicative event, drawing on source language content and shaping new meanings in the target language. As Dendrinos (2006) puts it, the role of the mediator is to interpret meaning and then to create it through writing (or speaking) for readers (or listeners) of a different linguistic or cultural background. His/her task is thus to act as

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a ‘go-between’, giving voice to those who have lost it (Zarate et al., 2004: 57) and establishing the interaction between languages and cultures. In trying to build a communicative bridge by means of information in the source and target texts – and thereby creating an interchange between languages and cultures – the interlingual mediator functions as a link, participating in two different cultures at the same time. In the absence of a mediator, individuals who do not share the same language may not be able to successfully achieve a specific communication goal. Furthermore, given that I do not expect the mediator to be totally fluent in both languages involved, my view of mediation as a translanguaging activity reflects a radical departure from the model of the ideal speaker (i.e. a proficient speaker of the target language). In my view, the plurilingual repertoire of the successful mediator, though differently developed in each language, enables him/her to access both languages (i.e. he/she is able to understand the one and express himself/herself in the other) in order to maximise communicative potential. By ‘plurilingual repertoire’, I am referring to the different linguistic resources available in each language which are selectively used by mediators when transferring information from one language to another according to the different task purposes. Moreover, during the process of trying to operate within and across generic or discoursal boundaries, the mediator unavoidably produces texts that simultaneously combine elements from two texts and two languages (Stathopoulou, 2009).

What Does the Ability to Mediate Involve? The ability to take part in an intercultural action, which involves relaying information from one language to another for a given purpose, seems to form part of the mediator’s interlingual competence and part of his/her ability to communicate in the target language. During the act of mediation, the mediator’s linguistic and cultural knowledge along with his/her capacity for simultaneously drawing on different linguistic and cultural resources are activated and used. Specifically, as Figure 1.1 shows, language users’ ability to mediate and translanguage not only involves being competent in two languages and making use of their linguistic knowledge, or selecting from a repertoire of possible meanings which of them to convey, but it also entails being competent in moving between languages and in relaying information from one language to the other according to the rules and possibilities of the communicative encounter. Thus, mediation strategies come into play and ultimately determine the success or failure of the end product. In other words, for a mediator to complete his/her task successfully,

Introduction

5

Linguistic competence in L1 & L2 Ability to use the competences and skills in both Ls Ability to mediate Ability to move between Ls, select messages, convey them appropriately in the target language & use different types of mediation strategies

Figure 1.1 Schematic representation of the ability to mediate

he/she may combine information from different sources, i.e. either his/her background knowledge of a topic or the source text. He/she may also reorganise source text sentences or whole paragraphs and may summarise source information into its gist, either in a single sentence or in more than one sentence. Another very successful strategy is textual integration and reformulation of the exact words of the source text, especially if it is combined with synthesising, creative blending or summarising. Of course, the aforementioned strategies are not independent of the task at hand. Being able to mediate also implies dealing with task requirements in such a way that the outcome will include – apart from the appropriate language – those mediation strategies conducive to the task at hand, thereby contributing to the success of the mediation. In order to mediate effectively, the mediator must perform a series of preparatory actions, including that of purposefully selecting information, ideas and messages from the source text. In fact, depending on the task at hand, the mediator is required to select which messages to transfer into the target language in order to bridge the communication gap, and to decide the linguistic means through which to transfer them and the mediation strategies that will be used in the process. Evidently, therefore, ‘selection’ is at the core of mediation and is a key term in any attempt to define it. In this book, mediation is regarded as a process in which social actors, i.e. the mediators, select from a range of linguistic alternatives within a repertoire of forms determined by previous learning. This view can also be linked to the definitions of verbal communication suggested by Bernstein (1961)3 and Gumperz and Hymes (1972/1986: 432, found in Coste & Simon, 2009: 172), in which the importance of social constraints in determining the process of selection in verbal communication are highlighted. Although a matter of

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individual choice, this selection on the part of the social actor from among the diverse resources at his/her disposal is ultimately determined by the social context and the interpersonal relationships involved while mediating. Note that the link between the ‘individual’ and the ‘social’ has also been raised by Moore and Castellotti (2008) and Coste and Simon (2009), attempting to define plurilingual competence. An important issue related to the ability to mediate that needs to be raised at this point is linked to the status of the two languages involved in the mediation process. Borrowing Trim’s (2004, in Pachler, 2007: 7) words, while mediating, the two ‘languages are not seen as simply existing side by side, quite separate in the mind, but as interacting to form one integrated competence upon any part of which a user may draw to meet the demands of communication’. In other words, the two languages and cultures, which are negotiated for communication, are not kept by the mediator in separate mental compartments, but rather they are used simultaneously, since they are in a constant dialogic relationship. Mediation ability, which forms part of both the multilingual/plurilingual competence – as defined by Coste and Simon (2009: 174) – and translanguaging competence, is ‘not conceived as the sum of competencies in distinct languages but as one global but complex capacity’ which may be more or less developed, depending on the mediator’s proficiency in each of the two languages or his/her linguistic experiences. Coste and Simon (2009: 174) stress the importance of the development of plurilingual competence as, according to them, it actively contributes to the construction of democratic citizenship and the struggle against exclusion. As a matter of fact, this non-separatist approach to viewing languages that come into creative contact is also reflected in the Inventory of Mediation Strategies (IMS) proposed herein, as the strategies detected and included in the model reflect the existence of a source text from which target content is drawn. Another important factor involved in the ability to mediate – and one which determines the product of mediation – is the context in which mediation occurs, namely: who mediates, for what purpose, in which discourse environment, what type of text he/she produces and from what type of text he/she relays information. Contextual features have to be taken into account by the mediator if he/she wishes to be successful in his/her task. As becomes evident, mediating is in itself a complex undertaking, and one which is rendered even more complex when the genre of the original text does not coincide with that of the target text because the mediator needs to coordinate the generic conventions of two different texts. In this case, however, the mixing of conventions seems to be unavoidable, thus rendering the target text hybrid (Stathopoulou, 2009).

Introduction

7

The Research This book presents research which had been designed to gain a multileveled understanding of the mechanisms of interlinguistic mediation4 in a testing context. The study was concerned specifically with interlinguistic mediation involving Greek learners/users of English, and it focused on written mediation in English, produced on the basis of information in Greek written source texts. In fact, the study investigated what mediation entails and what types of written mediation strategies lead to the fulfilment of a given communicative purpose, by drawing on data from the Greek national foreign language examination system, success in which leads to the State Certificate of Language Proficiency (Kratiko Pistopiitiko Glossomathias [KPG] certificate).5 Consistent with the recommendations of the European Commission to promote multilingualism, the KPG examination suite has incorporated interlinguistic mediation tasks as an exam component in both the writing and the speaking tests from B1 level onwards. Actually, by including mediation tasks and assessing test-takers’ mediation competence, the KPG examination battery acknowledges that in our globalised world, we may often find ourselves in communication encounters in which we need to function as mediators and help people who cannot understand and communicate with each other, due to their lack of cultural and/or linguistic resources. The data used in this research project have been retrieved from two databases: the KPG English task database, in which past paper test tasks are stored by level and module, and the KPG English corpus, which contains scripts produced by KPG candidates taking part in the written production and mediation test.6 Before moving to the research specifics, it is important to familiarise the readers with the requirements of KPG mediation tasks. The particular tasks require that candidates of B1, B2, C1 and C2 levels use their sociolinguistic knowledge and world experience, their language awareness and the reading skills they have developed in their first language (L1) in order to perform as mediators between L1 and second language (L2) texts. Mediation tasks actually require candidates to extract information from a source text in Greek and relay the general meaning or bits of information therein in English, but in a way that is conducive to the context of situation. Assuming thus that mediation performance is linked to the task that instigates production, task analysis and description on the basis of certain linguistic categories is the first step in the research process (Stage 1). The findings obtained from this phase allow us to respond to an essential

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question of this research, concerning how mediation test tasks differ across proficiency levels, i.e. what their characteristic features are at each level. The answer to this question is crucial, given our basic assumption that mediation performance is task dependent. By presenting the detailed task analysis and discussing the findings, there is an attempt to answer another related question concerning mediation performance: which features of the written mediation tasks prompt which types of mediation performance. In discussing the task analysis findings, attempts are made to arrive at conclusions regarding the textual features likely to be produced by candidates at different proficiency levels on the basis of specific mediation task types. The systematic linguistic description of KPG mediation tasks that was made possible through this research has enabled the development of mediation task-specific illustrative descriptors which may prove useful in informing mediation performance descriptors for teaching or testing purposes. This empirically derived list of can-do statements may in fact be considered one of the important contributions of this work, as levelled performance descriptors in curriculum and testing documents are commonly articulated as task-independent communicative production. During the second stage of the research, KPG candidates’ scripts (a corpus of 52,950 words) are textually analysed in order to identify which mediation strategies, as levelled task-dependent actions, lead to successful mediation practice. The scripts analysed are viewed as the outcomes of the social practice of mediation in which the language users are involved as social actors7 (i.e. a textually-oriented analysis). In other words, the approach used in the text analysis generally demonstrates an effort to restrict attention to the outcome of mediation (rather than to the mental or psychological processes involved while mediating) and reflects a preoccupation with the social dimensions of the text which is produced to fulfil certain communicative goals.8 While the underlying question regarding the degree of task dependence is only partly answered and only expected outcomes in terms of strategy use are articulated during the previous task analysis stage, it is during the second stage that we fully appreciate the strong link between mediation task and mediation performance in terms of the mediation strategy use. Note that the research has focused on the product of mediation (i.e. textual analysis) rather than on the process or the mediator. The final product of Stage 2 of the research, the IMS for effective mediation, is also considered a valuable contribution of the present work as it provides empirically based conclusions which could and should inform levelled descriptors relevant to mediation, something which is currently altogether absent from the CEFR and other international curriculum documents.

Introduction

9

On the basis of the IMS, mediation strategies were identified in the corpus, and the statistical analysis of the metadata derived from this identification procedure led to an understanding of (a) which mediation strategies triggered by specific tasks lead to successful mediation performance at different levels of performance and (b) to what extent mediation strategy use is dependent on task requirements. Quantitative data analysis brought to light indications of differentiated strategy use across tasks of different proficiency levels but, due to its numerical nature, did not raise our understanding of whether the linguistic realisation of these strategies varies across levels, thus no generalisation could be made. Given the need for a coherent understanding of what sort of language is used when mediating, the metadata derived from the quantification of the results was complemented with data derived from the qualitative analysis of certain linguistic characteristics of written mediation strategies. In fact, the assumption on which this further qualitative analysis has been based was that the linguistic means, through which mediation strategies are realised, differ as the level increases. The qualitative investigation thus found the extent to which the lexicalisation of certain mediation strategies traced in highproficiency scripts differs from the lexicalisation of those detected in low-proficiency scripts. Following a corpus-based approach and intending to shed light on the characteristics of successful mediation texts (i.e. texts as a result of interlingual mediation) by locating task-dependent mediation strategies that work in a sizeable corpus of candidates’ scripts of different proficiency levels, the originality of this work lies not only in that it deals with the unexplored communicative practice of mediation as an essential component of translanguaging practice in multilingual societies, but also in the methodologies used to fulfil its goal. Apart from the analysis of texts (i.e. candidates’ scripts), written mediation tasks were also analysed with a view to explore their linguistic characteristics as already mentioned. Both analyses led to the products of this work which will contribute in the future to the creation of standardised measures and clear benchmarks for the reliable assessment of mediation competence, thus complementing the CEFR. Actually, they may provide the basis for the creation of mediation-specific can-do statements. These will in turn make the reliable assessment of mediation competence and skills possible. The research outcomes may also contribute to the development of curricula, based on common objectives, and to the consistent development of language courses, test materials and syllabi, which will cater to the needs of particular groups of learners. In fact, curriculum, syllabus and

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materials designers may find the book a source of useful information and ideas for the development of effective mediation strategies, as well as for task selection, task design and task sequencing. Furthermore, language teachers who wish to develop their students’ mediation strategies can benefit from the outcomes of this research, as this work provides ideas for both the types of tasks that can be used when teaching students at different proficiency levels, as well as strategies that will help students acquire and develop the necessary skills to move with ease from one language to another. By knowing which type of mediation tasks are likely to help learners develop which mediation strategies, teachers can help their students practice accordingly, while at the same time raising their awareness regarding the fact that different types of tasks require the use of different strategies for a successful performance. The findings of this study, which actually demystify some of the aspects of mediation, may be useful not only for language educators but also for researchers coming from different research contexts (i.e. apart from the context of foreign language pedagogy), such as sociolinguists or critical discourse analysts wishing to analyse natural language for their own research purposes. However, as already mentioned above, it is not only the findings and the outcomes of this research that may be exploited by future studies, but also the methodologies.

The Context A major driving force for this research, as already mentioned in the Preface, was the inclusion of mediation tasks in the KPG exams in 2003, following the publication of the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001). The KPG exams, which lead to the State Certificate of Language Proficiency, have been developed by an examination board consisting of experts who are appointed by the Minister of Education and work within the context of the ministry’s directorate for the certification of foreign language proficiency. Panhellenic exams are offered in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Turkish, and are administered by the Ministry of Education in pen-and-paper form twice a year. The exam test papers are developed by teams of experts in each language at the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece. From its start in 2003, the KPG system adopted the six-level scale of language competence as set by the Council of Europe (A1–C2) and, according to the published specifications (Research Centre for Language, Teaching, Testing and Assessment [RCeL], KPG Exam Specifications, 2011),9 it seeks to test candidates’ ability to make socially purposeful use of the target

Introduction

11

language at different levels of proficiency. As stated by Dendrinos (2013b), the KPG is a system based on the belief that degrees of literacy in several languages help people face the challenges of globalisation, and facilitate mobility and growth. The KPG also insists on testing performance rather than competence, an insistence which derives from its view of language not as a structural but as a semiotic system (Dendrinos, 2013b). Emphasis has been put on the use and the user of the language rather than the formal linguistic system of one single language as do many international examination batteries. The theory that underlies the examination system is that of systemic functional linguistics (Dendrinos, 2009), on the basis of which language is viewed both as a resource for construing meaning (Halliday, 1975) and a system for meaning potential (Halliday, 1985a).10 The KPG exams actually view language as a result of choices available to the speaker/writer in order to express his/her meanings in a given situation, and imply that language exists in context and therefore must be studied in context. The production of language – that is, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ speech is articulated – largely depends on the context of situation (cf. Dendrinos, 2009). Task setting and linguistic demands are conveyed through the wording of the task supplied to the candidates (Shaw & Weir, 2007: 65), and specify exactly how the candidates are expected to respond, what type of text to produce, for whom their text will be written and for what reason. The KPG, which is a uniform system of language proficiency assessment, also serves the European objective of having common standards for the levels of proficiency across languages. In each of the six KPG languages, there are four modules testing candidates’ performance on the basis of (1) reading comprehension and language awareness, (2) writing production and written mediation, (3) listening comprehension and (4) speaking production and oral mediation. The KPG exams aim at measuring candidates’ ability to comprehend and produce oral or written discourse and, more specifically, the extent to which candidates can (a) understand messages in different types of oral and written texts, (b) produce context-appropriate speech and writing and (c) act as mediators.11 In addition to the above, the KPG examination battery is described as a ‘glocal’ system, possessing both a global character, i.e. taking into account international testing principles and concerns or international research findings, and its local character, i.e. taking into serious consideration the communicative needs of those sitting for the exams (Dendrinos, 2009). Its themes, topics and texts are relevant to Greek society, and the roles that candidates are asked to play are related to their experiences as individuals living, studying and working in Greece. For the design of the test papers, candidates’ knowledge, literacies and experiences are taken into serious account.

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Overview of the Chapters The book contains both theoretical and research-based chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 are basically theoretical. Chapter 2 gives an account of the way that the term ‘mediation’ is used in different disciplines with particular emphasis on foreign language education. Mediation is sharply distinguished from translation and interpretation, practices also involving the use of two languages but for a different purpose. Given that the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001) and the Commission of the European Communities (2007) view mediation as somehow synonymous with translation, it seems crucial to explain the main differences between the two activities since my view is a totally different one. Chapter 3 basically defines the notion of mediation. Mediation is seen as social practice (Dendrinos, 2006) and a form of ‘translanguaging’ (a term initially used in bilingual education but extended here), while the outcome of both oral and written forms of mediation is viewed as a hybrid combining the characteristics of two texts. Chapter 3 explains how this work favours a non-separatist view of languages by putting emphasis on the process – ‘languaging’ – and by stressing the importance of context as a determinant factor on the final outcome. In this chapter, mediation is also compared and contrasted with other forms of parallel language use (i.e. code-switching, code-crossing, intercomprehension, polylanguaging, metrolingualism, etc.), making the reader aware of how mediation is different from other sorts of languaging or other language practices. Chapter 4 begins by explaining what a mediation task within the context of foreign language teaching and testing involves, and explains why task description is important when analysing mediation performance. This chapter gives an empirically derived (or data-based) classification of mediation tasks in terms of their linguistic and mediatory requirements, and discusses what mediation tasks at different proficiency levels require. The discussion is actually based on findings which have been derived from the linguistic description of a specific number of written mediation tasks (i.e. the analysis of their linguistic features). Note that this chapter creatively exploits findings in the literature relating to task analysis in the field of foreign language teaching and testing. Finally, it discusses some basic considerations when designing mediation tasks for teaching and assessment purposes. In order to mediate effectively, the language user is required to use different mediation strategies in order to carry out the task at hand. Shifting attention from mediation tasks to mediation outcomes, Chapter 5 defines

Introduction

13

mediation strategies and presents a (inductively derived) model of their analysis. In addition to this, the chapter refers to the characteristics of the inductive approach followed in the course of the development of the model and discusses the analytical steps involved. Chapters 6 and 7 concern the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the mediation scripts, including not only several tables and figures which present results in numbers and percentages but also several examples drawn from the qualitative analysis. Specifically, Chapter 6 presents the results derived from the analysis of texts as a result of mediation with the ultimate aim to discover whether task type affects mediation strategy use, while the basic question it addresses is: Which strategies are linked to which tasks? The findings show that both the linguistic and mediatory requirements of tasks are crucial in influencing the popularity and the variety of mediation strategies in texts. Chapter 7 discusses the results derived from the qualitative analysis which aimed at investigating to what extent the lexicalisation or linguistic realisation of certain mediation strategies traced in low-proficiency scripts differs from the linguistic realisation of those detected in high-proficiency scripts. Chapter 7 as a whole basically addresses the following question: Which strategies differentiate scripts of differing proficiency levels? The conclusions arrived at after an analysis of the data, along with the implications for pedagogy and further research, are presented in Chapters 8 and 9, respectively. The book ends by stressing the importance of the implementation of programmes which will acknowledge mediation activities as a means of engaging students in translanguaging practices.

Notes (1)

(2) (3) (4)

(5)

Within the framework of ethnic, migration, racial and sociology studies, Vertovec (2007, 2009) uses the term ‘superdiversity’ to refer to the example of England (and particularly London), which is ‘the predominant locus of immigration and it is where super-diversity is at its most marked’ (Vertovec, 2007: 1042). Shifting the gaze to the linguistic aspect, Creese and Blackledge (2010b: 550) also use the term to focus on the ways in which this new diversity becomes the site of negotiations over linguistic resources. The terms ‘cross-language’ and ‘interlingual mediation’ are used interchangeably throughout this book. According to Bernstein (1961: 167) ‘the form of the social relationship acts selectively on language potential. Verbalisation is limited and organized by means of a narrow range of formal possibilities’. The research has been conducted within the framework of my PhD studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The title of the doctoral thesis was: ‘Task dependent interlinguistic mediation performance as translanguaging practice: The use of KPG data for an empirically based study’. Find information about the KPG exams at http://rcel.enl.uoa.gr/kpg/en_index.htm.

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(6) The RCeL has been digitalising KPG candidates’ scripts since 2004 with a view to developing a corpus which will be used for the investigation of the Greek foreign language learner’s profile (Gotsoulia & Dendrinos, 2011). The corpus now consists of about four million words. A range of scripts rated as fully satisfactory, moderately satisfactory and unsatisfactory comprise the corpus. Each script in the corpus database has been marked by two human raters following a 15-point scale. In fact, the final mark given to each candidate is the mean score of the two raters. Investigating rater agreement in writing assessment, Hartzoulakis (2014) has found that raters apply the relevant criteria in a generally uniform way, showing strong significant correlations in the different rating periods. (7) For a discussion of mediation as social practice, see Dendrinos (2006, 2007a, 2007b). (8) Hyland (2002a: 5, found in Shaw & Weir, 2007: 86) suggests three general approaches to the research of writing. These focus on (a) the products of writing by analysing them on the basis of systemic functional linguistics or discourse and genre analysis, (b) the writer and the processes used to generate output and (c) the role readers or audiences play in writing production. (9) For the specifications, see http://rcel.enl.uoa.gr/kpg/en_index.htm. (10) This view of language is consistent with Bakhtin’s philosophy of language. Bakhtin (1981: 294) sees language not as a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions, but as being populated with the intentions of others. See also Bakhtin (1986). (11) For further information about the KPG exams, see Dendrinos (2013a).

2 The Notion of Mediation: An Interdisciplinary Overview Introduction This chapter contributes to the general understanding of the notion of mediation by discussing the origins of the term and gives an account of the way it is used in different disciplines (i.e. communication studies, conflict resolution studies, translation studies, philosophy and foreign language education) in order to compare and contrast it with its meaning herein. Given the focus of this book, particular emphasis has been put on mediation in foreign language didactics. The chapter also explains the main differences between translation1 and mediation as generally this work makes a sharp distinction between the two activities.

The Origins of the Term ‘Mediation’ As regards its etymological roots, the word ‘mediator’ is derived either from the Latin word medius (middle) or from the Latin root mediare – to halve, to be in the middle, to intercede, to act as intermediary (cf. Roth, 2007; Wall & Lynn, 1993; Zarate et al., 2008). The derived noun medium, besides centre, midst and intermediary, also denotes ‘the middle term’ of a logical syllogism (Roth, 2007: 658). In Chinese, the verb ‘mediate’ means ‘to step between two parties and solve their problem’. As noted by Williams (1985: 204, found in Lloyd Jones, 2000: 647), the term ‘mediation’ has long been a relatively complex word, one that has been made so by its use as a key term in several systems of thought. The activity of mediation has a long history dating back to the great ancient civilisations of Phoenicia, Babylon, Greece and Rome. In fact, mediation was a common practice among Phoenicians in their commercial transactions involving the buying and selling of goods, and according to Dendrinos (2006: 11–12), in the Mediterranean world, mediation was a political act of diplomacy. Mediators have played key roles in cultures since ancient times. One of the best-known ancient mediators was the Greek god Hermes who, among his other roles, served as the messenger between 15

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Zeus and mortals, between Zeus and the underworld and between the underworld and mortals (cf. Apostolou, 2009). Ancient Greeks knew the mediator as a proxenetas, 2 while the Romans called mediators by a variety of names, including internuncius, medium, intercessor, philantropus, interpolator, conciliator, interlocutor, interpres and finally mediator. African, Asian and South American cultures regarded the mediator as a religious figure, a wise man worthy of particular respect who often intervened to explain phenomena and events or acted as an intermediary in dealings with other communities and cultures (‘the community elder’). In Swiss, German and Japanese cultures, the mediator served as a judge, whose duty was to promote the settlement of disagreements (cf. Eileen & Mackie, 2006). The term has also been applied to Christ, whose mission is to ‘mediate’ between God and man. Williams (1985, as cited in Livingstone, 2009) traces ‘mediation’ back to the 14th century and notes three central meanings of the term: (a) acting as an intermediary (e.g. the political act of reconciling adversaries), (b) intermediate (indirect) agency between otherwise separated parties to a ship and (c) a formal way of directly expressing otherwise unexpressed relations. As explained in Zarate et al. (2008: 171), the term ‘mediation’ was introduced into the field of law and jurisprudence in the United States in 1970. From there, it spread to many European countries and the Commonwealth. In this context, mediation presupposes a conflict and implies the intervention of a neutral person. Nowadays, it is used differently in many different disciplines. As discussed below, in education, psychology, conflict resolution studies and international relations, for instance, it is used to refer to the intervening role of a third party, called a mediator, who assists two conflicting parties. According to Pruitt and Kressel (1989), mediation is third-party assistance to two or more interacting parties.

The Meaning of ‘Mediation’ in Different Disciplines Mediation in conflict resolution studies and international affairs In conflict resolution studies, the goal of mediation as a dispute resolution process is to produce a voluntary and consensual outcome (Macfarlane, 2003, cited in Gerami, 2009: 435) and is considered as an alternative to destructive confrontation, prolonged litigation or even violence. In conflict resolution studies, mediation is seen as ‘an institutional interactional system in which disputing parties discuss and resolve differences with the help of a third party’ (Garcia, 1991: 818). As stated by Macfarlane (2003, cited in Gerami, 2009: 435), ‘the distinguishing

The Notion of Mediation: An Interdisciplinary Overview

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characteristic of mediation as a dispute resolution process is its goal to produce a voluntary and consensual outcome, and the decision maker’s lack of authority to impose a settlement on the parties’. The Council of Europe has recognised mediation as an effective method of resolving disputes, helping to free up of court time and to reduce the costs of justice for citizens and businesses.3 As mentioned in the European Commission’s4 2008 press release (08/263-23/04/2008), in 1999, the heads of state or government of the member states called for the creation of local, alternative, extrajudicial procedures for dispute resolution in the member states, in order to improve access to justice in Europe. The commission acted to achieve this political objective: In 2002, it presented a Green Paper on alternative means of dispute resolution, while in 2004, it adopted a proposal for a directive on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters (IP/04/1288). This directive establishes rules on civil procedure to aid access to dispute resolution by promoting the use of mediation and by ensuring a sound relationship between mediation and judicial proceedings. On 23 April 2008, the European Parliament formally approved the council’s common position on this new directive. 5 During the process of conflict resolution, mediators exercise a significant amount of authority and power (Gerami, 2009: 433). They are the dominant figures who may play the role(s) of the ‘writer, director, and one of the central characters in the play’ (Smith, 1998: 849). Regardless of the role that they assume, they are expected to act impartially, assisting the parties to work out a mutually acceptable or satisfactory resolution. The meaning of the term ‘impartial’ has been summed up by Morris (1997: 321, as cited in Gerami, 2009: 436) as ‘the quality of being principled enough to remain equally committed to the legitimate interests of all parties’. The mediator is thus not supposed to favour, support or demonstrate a preference for the position of one party over another and, consequently, he/ she is not allowed to pass judgement (cf. Alcover de la Hera, 2006; Baraldi, 2009; Bush & Folger, 1994; Carnevale & Pruitt, 1992; Mulcahy, 2001). Within the framework of conflict resolution studies, scholars have attempted to explain the particular practice by drawing on philosophical ideas such as those of Habermas. As argued by Chilton and Cuzzo (2005), Habermasian ideas of the ‘conditions of communication’ can help mediators be effective in their task. They characteristically state that Habermas’s theory of communicative action asserts that ‘parties can recognize, acknowledge, and preserve a communicative connection between themselves based on the presuppositions of argumentation inherent in the human experience of trying to coordinate behavior.

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All human beings assume the posture of relationship with each other. Mediation creates a unique space for people to explore that fundamental recognition, and protect it even in the midst of conflict’. (Chilton & Cuzzo, 2005: 347) Stressing the importance of being aware of the presuppositions of argumentation when mediating, Chilton and Cuzzo (2005) claim that they can give mediators a practical checklist of potential areas of breakdown in the process, thereby allowing mediators to suggest different directions. As regards the role of mediator, in order for him/her to represent all interests of both parties and act as an ‘active and influential agent of change’ (Morris, 1997: 347), he/she has to employ a variety of techniques,6 such as focusing on the content of the agreement, offering suggestions, fostering constructive dialogue and encouraging the parties to bring forward their needs and interests. Of course, there is no uniformity as regards the amount and types of strategies that mediators use. This is in line with Macfarlane’s (2003: 281–289, as cited in Gerami, 2009: 435) view, which argues that mediation is ‘not a monolithic process’, but rather one which has many variations and comprises a range of practices and procedures, reflecting ‘a diversity of philosophies, styles and strategies’. Going one step further, Charkoudian et al. (2009) refer to different mediation styles found in the literature and distinguish between pragmatic, socio-emotional and mixed mediators (Picard, 2004) or between evaluative, facilitative and transformative mediators (Bush & Folger, 1994; Riskin, 1994). Pragmatic mediators are ‘task focused and problem-oriented’ and can associate with terms such as ‘settlement, evaluative, and directive’ (Picard, 2004: 302– 303), while socio-emotional mediators – being more focused on the people than on the problem under negotiation – are associated with terms such as ‘humanistic, transformative, and relational’. Picard (2004: 304) refers to the mixed mediator as ‘someone who describes his or her work using pragmatic and socio-emotional descriptors interchangeably, suggesting that they have a more pluralistic vision of mediation than those who repeatedly use the same constructs to define their work’. Finally, evaluative mediators are those who hold the view that the disputants should be given direction by the mediator who has the expertise to deal with conflicts, whereas facilitative mediators believe that the participants need assistance in building communication. Mediators deal with different types of disputes, and this can be illustrated by the very different types of mediation that can be found in the literature,7 e.g. neighbour/community,8 family and custody as well as juvenile and school mediation. Mediation has also been used innovatively to

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resolve conflict in prisons and in disputes related to employment, religion, business or corporate relations, race relations, public or community policy, migrant workers, agriculture and the environment (McGillis, 1997, found in Li-On, 2009: 455). Studies that have explored the notion of mediation as a key process to conflict resolution involve those conducted in the area of militarised disputes (cf. Leng & Regan, 2003), community disputes (cf. Li-On, 2009; Pruitt et al., 1993), family disputes (cf. Shah-Kazemi, 2000) or divorce negotiations (cf. Haynes & Haynes, 1989), labour–management disputes (cf. Mumpower & Rohrbaugh, 1996), consumer disputes (Orenstein & Grant, 1989), school settings disputes9 (cf. Davis, 1986; Johnson et al., 1992, 1995a; Telson & McDonald, 1992; Turnuklu et al., 2009a, 2009b), intercultural/interlingual disputes (in different contexts) (cf. Farini, 2008; Lee, 2002) and international relations (cf. Abu-Nimer, 1996; Bercovitch, 1996; Bercovitch & Schneider, 2000; Dacey, 2005; Eileen & Mackie, 2006), to name a few. Particularly in relation to international affairs, i.e. when the disputants are governments of sovereign states, international institutions or organisations, the resolution of conflicts via the use of a neutral party is referred to as international mediation. Within this context, mediation is thus considered as ‘a form of conflict resolution in international politics which stresses the vital role of a third party in the process of creating peace and facilitating agreement between erstwhile disputing actors’ (Lloyd Jones, 2000: 648). As Gerner and Schrodt (2001) mention, this ‘third party’ may be a government official whose country is not a direct party to the dispute, someone associated with an international body like the United Nations, a representative of a non-governmental organisation or even an individual. Studies on international mediation has traditionally focused on how effectively the mediator deals with opposing interests and preferences (cf. Kleiboer, 1996).

Mediation in communication studies and technology In communication studies, the term ‘mediation’ is used to refer to the intervening role that the process of communication plays in the making of meaning. Specifically, within media research (cf. Couldry, 2000; MartinBarbero, 1993; Silverstone, 1999), the term ‘mediation’ is generally used to refer simply to the act of transmitting something through the media. However, there is no consensus among media researchers as to the meaning of the term. A number of writers (cf. Altheide, 1985; Couldry, 2000; Gumpert & Cathcart, 1990; Martin-Barbero, 1993; Silverstone, 1999, among others) have used the term to describe ‘the transformation of

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societies through a linear media logic’ (Couldry, 2008: 376), while others (cf. Hjarvard, 2004, 2007, 2008; Krotz, 2001; Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999; Schulz, 2004) introduce and use the term ‘mediatisation’,10 which actually describes the process of societal transformation due to the impact of media. As a matter of fact, while a number of media researchers use the two terms interchangeably (cf. Altheide & Snow, 1988: 195), Hjarvard (2008) sharply distinguishes mediation from mediatisation. Mediation describes the concrete act of communication by means of a medium in a specific social context. By contrast, mediatization refers to a more long-lasting process, whereby social and cultural institutions and modes of interaction are changed as a consequence of the growth of the media’s influence. (Hjarvard, 2008: 114) People’s behaviour, ideological systems and, in general, social reality are influenced, moulded or transformed by the media, which act as ‘mediational means’ (Wertsch, 1994). Media provide meaning, which is ‘rented’ by the receivers, who later transform it and make it their own. Silverstone (2002: 762), whose definition is rather neutral, states that mediation involves ‘the fundamentally, but unevenly, dialectical process in which institutionalized media of communication (the press, broadcast radio and television, and increasingly the world wide web), are involved in the general circulation of symbols in social life’. Commenting on the impact of media on society, Hjarvard (2007) characteristically states that ‘the social and cultural activities are influenced by media environments which they gradually become more dependent upon’. In much the same vein, Couldry (2008: 379), for example, defines mediation as ‘the overall effect of media institutions existing in contemporary societies, the overall difference that media make by being there in our social world’. Serious scholarship relating to new media and digital culture gained momentum mainly after the world wide web, browsers and search engines brought the internet and other digital media technologies into workplaces, schools and homes in the early 1990s. One can no longer conceive of everyday life without acknowledging the central role that electronic media (but also books and the press) play in defining the way in which people see, live and act (Silverstone, 2002: 762), or in producing, consuming, distributing and transforming meanings. The new media are viewed as powerful instruments in the reproduction and transmission of dominant ideologies, interests or power structures, or as agents of cultural transmission.

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Scholars agree on the role of information and communication technologies in mediating almost every dimension of social life (cf. Couldry, 2008; Hjarvard, 2007; Livingstone, 2009; Martín-Barbero, 2006). Specifically, Couldry (2008: 285) refers to the mediating role of technology between people and the world and he moves on to argue that ‘what technology mediates today more assiduously and rapidly than ever is the transformation of society into a market place and the constitution of the latter into the main driving force of globalization (in all its various and contradictory meanings)’. Recently, linguists concerned with language loss and revitalisation have begun using new technologies in projects aimed at revitalising the practice of lesser-used languages. In fact, as stated by Eisenlohr (2004: 21), practices of electronic mediation enabled by such technologies (e.g. documentation and dissemination of lesser-used languages) shape linguistic ideologies, which in turn crucially ‘influence the possible revived use or abandonment of linguistic varieties’. Recent work on minority language broadcasting has highlighted the potentially helpful effects of electronic mediation and digital technologies for the maintenance and renewal of lesser-used languages.

Mediation in philosophy In both Hegelian and Marxist thought (Hegel, 1806/1977; Marx, 1845/1976), the concept of mediation plays a central role. First of all, for both philosophers, practical activity is the middle term that mediates between subject and object. Attempting to interpret the aforementioned claim, Roth (2007: 660) states, ‘in mediating, the middle term both cancels and transcends the contradiction of the mutually constitutive and presupposing terms, which, to reiterate, are only external expressions of the inner contradiction of an entity that is both identical and non-identical with itself’ and moves on to argue that ‘activity cannot be reduced to the subject of activity or the object of activity, because these terms are mutually exclusive yet constitutive of each other’. Particularly for Hegel (1816/1969), human culture is nothing but mediation and ‘the concept of “Being” is mediated by all the social development’ (Blunden, 2007). As stated in the Science of Logic (Hegel, 1816/1969: 68), ‘there is nothing, nothing in Heaven, or in Nature or in Mind or anywhere else which does not equally contain both immediacy and mediation’. Hegel claims that reality is the result of a process of mediation; it is not a first principle, but a last result (Cunningham, 1910/2001: 69). Blunden (2007) also very aptly explains this view through the following words:

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Labour transforms what is given by Nature into artefacts of various kinds which are in turn consumed as the objects of new needs. In this way a ‘second nature’ intervenes, mediating between the subject and Nature, the immediate object of the consciousness which orients human activity. These artefacts, which are bearers of meaning and norms of labour, are the substance of consciousness. (Blunden, 2007) In Hegel’s work (1806/1977), the term ‘mediation’ constitutes a triadic relation. Mediation is seen as a process involving two different, contradictory and negating expressions of the same unity. The new situation which emerges from this process mediates between the differences. In her effort to interpret Hegel, Roth (2007: 660) mentions that ‘mediation is a process occurring on the inside of a unit, which is transformed into its negating opposite; it is nothing other than self-identity reflected into itself’. Hegel (1806/1977) also contends that mediation between two extremes entails a go-between or a third party and points out: Here, these two sides are moments of force; they are just as much in a unity, as this unity, which appears as the middle term over against the independent extremes, is a perpetual diremption of itself into just these extremes, which only exist in this process. (Hegel, 1806/1977: 82–83) In pursuing the traditions of Hegel and Marx, Leont’ev (1975/1978) also uses the concept of mediation when discussing the mediating function of the physical body (i.e. organs such as the heart, the brain, etc.) between culture and action. Leont’ev (1975/1978: 19) claims that organs play an important role in social relationships because the act of taking part in one is realised through the function of ‘their brains, their organs of feeling, and their organs of action’. In fact, Hegel (1807/1977) has discussed the role of the hand in human activity in connection with the relationship between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. For Hegel, the hand, being the expression of the ‘inner’, is the means by which the human subject realises himself/ herself. What is actually claimed is that the organ (i.e. the hand) has a mediating function between the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, and this is the very essence of consciousness. Roth (2007: 676) points out that there is no consciousness without organs (and without a body in general), thus considering mediation as a key notion for understanding consciousness, thinking and thought. Marx (1867), in the first chapter of Capital, explains that the social organisation of labour is mediated through market exchange, i.e. the buying and selling of commodities (goods and services). Money, seen as the mediation of the commodity,

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is not just superadded to the commodity but is the mode of existence of the commodity itself. In the absence of this mediation, use-value and value would remain merely juxtaposed, in the sense that use-value production, as a condition of all social existence, is by no means merely value-production and indeed points beyond it. (Gunn, 1987: 9) Generally, mediation in Marxist theory refers to the reconciliation of two opposing forces (superstructure vs base) within a given society by a mediating object. For example, if the mediating object is media, then the communication will be such that it will relate Marxism to media. Duarte informs us that Marx and Engels (1975: 31), in their effort to distinguish human activity from animal activity, claim that ‘between the need and the object that may satisfy it there is the mediation of the activity of production of tools that is, the activity of production of means of subsistence’ (Duarte, 2006: 214). From a different perspective, Habermas (1962/1989), who discusses how the ‘public sphere’ emerged in bourgeois society in the 18th century, sees the ‘public sphere’ as a kind of mediator between society, where private interests prevail, and the state, which often exerts arbitrary forms of power, thus associating the emergence of the public sphere with the development and transformation of capitalism and the rise of bourgeois society.11 The public sphere as a sphere which mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere—that principle of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities. (Habermas et al., 1974: 50) According to Habermas, the bourgeois public sphere, which consisted of newspapers and institutions of political discussion (such as parliaments, political clubs, literary salons, public assemblies, meeting halls and other public spaces) was the mediator between the concerns and interests of individuals in the realm of their personal lives on the one hand, contrasted with the demands and concerns placed on them by their participation in social and public life on the other. Thus, the public sphere functioned as a forum in which people could freely express their opinions, resulting in the shaping of public opinion.12 Interestingly enough, the aforementioned views seem to be in line with those of Hegel (1806/1977) regarding the role of civil and state social institutions (his so-called ‘third term’), which he sees as serving to function as mediating agents between individuals.13

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Cultural mediation in society and education In a number of countries, cultural mediation is considered to be a profession. Italy (cf. Schuster, 2005) and Belgium have already gained quite a lot of experience in this kind of ‘cultural intervention’. In addition, the Netherlands, the UK, Switzerland and Sweden offer a wide range of specialist services for migrant groups. In Greece and Portugal, public health-care services aimed at catering for immigrants’ needs are very few and are concentrated in the major cities (Ingleby, 2006). Mediators who actually work for governments or other non-governmental or humanitarian organisations, such as hospitals, health clinics, schools, country agencies, migrant health (cf. Baraldi, 2006, 2009; Bolden, 2000; Bot, 2003; Cambridge, 1999; Davidson, 2000, 2001; Nierkens et al., 2002; Ulrey & Amason, 2001), universities, churches and local community gathering places, facilitate the placement of foreign citizens into a new ethnic and social context. According to Farini, mediation materializes in triadic interaction involving an interpreter/ mediator as a third party in the communication process between individuals speaking a different language and following different cultural orientations, where interpreters/mediators assume the role of promoting linguistic interpretation and cultural relations. (Farini, 2008: 254) ‘Cultural mediation’ as a term first appeared in the field of education in 2008, with the publication of Cultural Mediation in Language Learning and Teaching within the framework of the first medium-term programme of activities of the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML)14 (2000–2003). As the authors of the publication point out (Zarate et al., 2008: 11), the ECML project, the outcome of which was the aforementioned publication, addresses the concept of cultural mediation in situations of intolerance or xenophobia, and attempts to remedy these problems in the language teaching context. In line with the overall efforts to promote identities in a plurilingual and pluricultural Europe, the publication attempts to refine the definition of competences recognised in the CEFR, generically referred to therein as intercultural awareness, intercultural skills and existential competence. Empathy, hospitality and respect of the ‘Other’ are seen by the authors as components of cultural mediation and are investigated as such. The authors conclude by underscoring the teacher’s role as mediator and facilitator. Considering the cultural dimension of the language, the language teacher needs to be able to support the teaching of the target culture, raise students’

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awareness of its cultural patterns and prepare students to use such patterns appropriately in intercultural encounters (cf. Boubakour, 2010; Clouet, 2006; Hynninen, 2011).

Mediation in translation studies The term ‘mediation’ has also been widely used by scholars to refer to the process in which the translator gets involved when moving back and forth between two languages with a view to bridging potential linguistic and cultural gaps. Note that apart from translators, this is also done by ‘interpreters’ and ‘cultural mediators’. They all repair problems in communication when two (or more) participants do not know each other’s language and language use conventions. Translators negotiate between languages and various aspects of cultures (cf. Federici, 2007; García Luque, 2009) ‘including ideologies, moral systems and socio-political structures seeking to overcome those incompatibilities which stand in the way of transfer of meaning’ (Hatim & Mason, 1990: 223). While this book maintains that mediation and translation are two distinct processes, scholars in the field of translation studies see mediation as a prerequisite for translation, as is evident in Schäffner’s (2003: 89) words: ‘In order to fulfil this role, translators need to be competent mediators’. From a historical perspective, the idea of the translator as a mediating agent was initially used by Steiner (1975). Mainly focusing on the linguistic aspect of translation, he actually points out that ‘the translator is a bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in two different language communities’ (Steiner, 1975: 45). The ‘social turn’ (Pöchhacker, 2006), which took place in the late 1980s in the area of translation and interpreting research, prompted a rethink of the roles of the translator and the interpreter (cf. Eraslan-Gercek, 2008; Federici, 2007; Hernández, 1997; Katan, 1999). In fact, Bochner (1981) introduced the concept of cultural mediation to the field of translation studies in an interesting collection of articles entitled The Mediating Person: Bridges between Cultures. Contributing to this volume, Taft (1981) defines the role of cultural mediator as the person who facilitates communication, understanding, and action between persons or groups who differ with respect to language and culture. The role of the mediator is performed by interpreting expressions, intentions, perceptions, and expectations of each cultural group to the other, that is, by establishing and balancing the communication between them. In order to serve as a link in this sense, the mediator must be able

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to participate to some extent in both cultures. Thus a mediator must be to a certain extent bicultural. (Taft, 1981: 53) In the same article, Taft (1981) refers to the competencies that an effective mediator should possess, which are knowledge about society, communication skills, technical skills (e.g. computer literacy), social skills (i.e. knowledge of the rules that govern social relations in society) and emotional competence (e.g. the appropriate level of self-control). Within the new framework of viewing language and culture as being inextricably linked (Kramsch, 1998a) and of regarding language as a form of social action (Halliday, 1985a, 1985b), the notions of interlinguistic and/ or (inter)cultural mediation emerged to stress the role of the translator as a mediating agent between two languages and therefore two cultures (cf. Federici, 2007). As Farini (2008) maintains, mediation materializes in triadic interaction involving an interpreter/ mediator as a third party in the communication process between individuals speaking a different language and following different cultural orientations, where interpreters/mediators assume the role of promoting linguistic interpretation and cultural relations. (Farini, 2008: 254) In more recent research, there has been much discussion on what constitutes translation and mediation, and what their relationship is. The translator (or interpreter) can be said to serve as a cultural and linguistic bridge, or as Schäffner (2003: 89) puts it, as a bridge builder for communication, i.e. one who reproduces the message while paying more attention to intercultural communication (cf. Garcia-Luque, 2009) than to the supposed fidelity of the transmission of the content. Of course, as Valero-Garcés (2005a, 2005b) maintains, there are still two main traditions or tendencies in translation studies relating to how the role of the translator and interpreter is perceived: (a) as a professional responsible for ‘taking’ a text from one language to another following the traditional principles of fidelity and adequacy and (b) as an intercultural mediator responsible for filling the gap between two languages and cultures and promoting an understanding of the different groups involved and their diverse cultural and ideological values (Valero-Garcés & Sales-Salvador, 2007: 124). Drawing on the relevant literature, Hatim and Mason (1990) equate the role of the translator with that of the mediator. Chapter 11 of their influential book entitled Discourse and the Translator, discusses this issue. As stated therein, ‘the translator is first and foremost a

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mediator between two parties for whom mutual communication might otherwise be problematic’ (Hatim & Mason, 1990: 223). Katan (1999: 11) also discusses the role of the translator or interpreter as a cultural mediator, ‘able to mediate the non-converging world-views or maps of the world, so allowing the participants to cooperate to the degree they wish’. In addition, Valero-Garcés (2005a, 2006) considers the relationship of the two as interchangeable, i.e. mediation is a form of translation, and translation is a form of mediation. She argues that the role of the translator (or interpreter) in today’s globalised and multilingual societies should not be that of a ‘walking dictionary’; instead, the translator (or interpreter), who basically acts in a variety of cultural settings, should actively participate in the communicative process, producing oral or written texts in which forms and words are manipulated to promote further understanding across cultures (Valero-Garcés, 2006). Garcia-Luque (2009) and Federici (2007) also use the metaphor of translation as a mediating activity with the former focusing primarily on community interpreting and the latter stressing the importance of the metaphor (and of many others, such as translator as traveller) in translation research. It is worth mentioning that García-Luque (2009) examines the extent to which the view of interpreter as mediator is present in many of the works published in the field, and the degree to which it has influenced research, practice and training. The notion of mediation in translation studies has been used not only to symbolise the bridge between languages and cultures, but also to signal the intervention of translators in the source text, a fact that is illustrated by the definition given by Hatim and Mason (1997). According to Hatim and Mason (1997: 147), mediation is ‘the extent to which translators intervene in the transfer process feeding their own knowledge and beliefs into their processing of a text’. They actually refer to degrees of mediation, distinguishing between minimal and maximal mediation. Minimal mediation occurs when the features of the source text are made totally visible; this type of mediation is basically what Venuti (1995) calls a ‘foreignising’ translation. In contrast, when the translation constitutes ‘a radical departure from the source text in terms of register membership, intentionality, socio-cultural and socio-textual practices’ (Hatim & Mason, 1997: 153), it is maximally mediated, or in Venuti’s (1995) terms, it constitutes an example of a ‘domesticating’ translation. Examples of a third type of mediation, i.e. partial mediation, have been provided by Hatim and Mason (1997). In this latter case, although significant discoursal shifts may occur between the source and the target text, the outcome is rather neutral.

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It is evident from the above distinction that Hatim and Mason (1997) connect mediation with the degree of the translator’s intervention in the target text. Many other scholars within the field of translation studies have approached this particular issue in a similar way. For instance, Viaggio (2006) and Federici (2007) point out that translation involves the manipulation of meaning in order to stress the intervening role of the translator when dealing with the source text. Scholars who have dealt particularly with interpreting also consider interpreters as linguistic or cultural intermediaries because of their ability to intervene actively in the communication process in order to make the exchange of information helpful (cf. Eraslan-Gercek, 2008; García-Luque, 2009). This seems to be in line with Wadensjö (1998: 153–154), who points out that ‘in interpreter-mediated encounters, the interpreter is expected to actively, immediately and constantly engage in various aspects of sense making’, while the understanding which the primary interlocutors derive from the interaction is assumed to be achieved via the mediating third party. GarcíaLuque (2009: 650) moves on to argue that when interpreters mediate, they make use of numerous strategies, such as explaining cultural differences, simplifying technical language or omitting or summarising utterances, just to give a few examples of how they mediate and consequently intervene in the interaction. Finally, Pym (2002) uses the term ‘localisation’ to emphasise the adaptation or change that the original text undergoes when it is translated. As a matter of fact, in his paper, he maintains that the meaning of the terms ‘translation’ and ‘mediation’ coincides and that localisation is a composite of mediation.

Mediation in Foreign Language Education Mediation in Europe and in Greece In 2001, the notion of mediation became an object of concern in foreign language education through its inclusion in the CEFR. This inclusion indicated that there had been a recent development that deserved our attention in relation to the exploitation of the first language (L1) in the English as a foreign language (EFL) context and the assessment of mediation competence. The CEFR (2001: 14) suggests that learning how to mediate constitutes one of the basic aims of foreign language programmes and examination systems because ‘mediating language activities – (re)processing of an existing text – occupy an important place in the normal linguistic functioning of our societies’.

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Following the CEFR and recognising the importance of mediation, Glaboniat et al.’s (2005) Profile Deutsch (Germany, Switzerland and Austria) and the New Curricula for Modern Languages in Romania (Ministerul educaţiei şi cercetării, 2006) included mediation as a key competence of foreign language learners. Profile Deutsch (Glaboniat et al., 2005) includes can-do objectives at different proficiency levels; these objectives were set for the various categories of activity according to their treatment in the CEFR, i.e. reception, production, interaction and mediation. As for mediation and following the CEFR’s view of mediation, the publication has attempted to describe what the German user of English at different performance levels is expected to do with the language when he/she mediates without, however, linking performance to different sorts of tasks. Additionally, the new curricula for modern languages provided descriptors relevant to mediation but by viewing mediation as a translation process (Ministerul educat¸iei şi cerceta˘rii, 2006).15 The 2011 Integrated Foreign Languages Curriculum (IFLC) in Greece considers mediation competence as one that has to be developed across proficiency levels. A number of mediation skills descriptors were included in the document, thus helping teachers to create their own oral and written mediation tasks for teaching and testing purposes.16 The publication is in effect a multilingual curriculum in the sense that it includes comparable descriptions of communicative and linguistic performance in different languages and across distinct proficiency levels (cf. Dendrinos & Gotsoulia, 2015). In the early 1980s, issues regarding intercultural mediation had become an important part of the dominant foreign language teaching (FLT) scene in Greece (cf. Dendrinos, 1988, 1997, 2000, 2003). Tasks which made use of Greek for a variety of purposes were included in the main materials (Task Way English 1, 2 and 3) used at primary state schools, thereby promoting the use of the L1 for a variety of purposes in the English language teaching (ELT) programme (Dendrinos, 1986). However, mediation gained prominence in Greece in 2003 through its inclusion in the Kratiko Pistopiitiko Glossomathias (KPG) exams (cf. Dendrinos, 2006, 2007a, 2007b), as already mentioned in Chapter 1. In fact, this exam battery which embraces and implements the mingling-of-languages idea, asks candidates to act as mediators in the writing and speaking test, and to produce texts in English by selecting information from a source text in Greek. The higher the level of proficiency that the tasks are meant to test, the greater the demands are in terms of linguistic, pragmatic and generic competence. In fact, depending on the level of the exam, when asked to relay information from Greek to English, candidates may be asked to produce the same or a different genre

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and/or register than that of the source text. This requires skills that enable mediators to interpret social meaning in one language and to create social meaning in another language (cf. Dendrinos, 2006) by way of producing a text of the same or a different genre, conforming of course to the different generic and register conventions. It is important to note that the inclusion of mediation in the test papers of the KPG exams has not been without reaction in the Greek language teaching scene, as stated by Dendrinos (2014: 164): ‘though, admittedly, those that have been positioned most strongly against it are L1 English speakers who have found jobs teaching English in Greece’. Obviously, they benefit from the exclusion of the learners’ mother tongue from the classroom, from the teaching materials and from the testing batteries for foreign language proficiency. Dendrinos (2014) moves on to argue, however, that most Greek foreign language teachers do not have a negative attitude towards testing mediation competence, rather they are sceptical about doing so. This is because candidates have not really been prepared to perform as mediators since before its inclusion in the new curriculum for languages in school in 2011, and because mediation was not part of mainstream teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) materials or practices.

Mediation versus translation The CEFR suggests that mediation is somehow synonymous with professional translation and interpretation, a view not adopted in this book and one that will be discussed in detail below. It defines mediation as a process where ‘the language user is not concerned to express his/ her own meanings, but simply to act as an intermediary between interlocutors who are unable to understand each other directly – normally (but not exclusively) speakers of different languages’ (Council of Europe, 2001: 87–88). According to the CEFR, oral mediation is synonymous with simultaneous interpretation (e.g. at conferences and meetings), consecutive interpretation (e.g. speeches and guided tours) or informal interpretation (e.g. in social and transactional situations for friends, family and clients, or of signs, menus and notices). Written mediation may involve exact translation (e.g. of legal and scientific texts), literary translation, summarising gist (within the L1 or between the L1 and the second language [L2]) or paraphrasing. Following the CEFR, Dévény (2013) also links mediation with translation, stating that

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mediation is a skill which facilitates mediation activity in the course of which the information in source language (SL) text is successfully processed while using appropriate mediation strategies such as summarising, paraphrasing and rewording, in a manner in which essential information content of the SL text is successfully switched into the target language. Transfer is successful if it is accomplished with appropriate linguistic, lexical and stylistic tools without causing essential distortion to information content. [...] A successful mediation strives to ensure that the message remains clear in the target text. (Dévény, 2013: 307) In this book, however, the translator’s role as a ‘rewriter’ is contrasted with the mediator’s role as a ‘maker/creator of new meanings’ and the word ‘distortion’ of source content, as used by Dévény (2013), is of no use in our context. Dendrinos (2014) says that Mediators, unlike translators and interpreters, have the prerogative of producing their own text; a text which may not be equivalent in terms of form, while it may be loosely connected in terms of the meanings articulated. Mediators bring into the end product their own ‘voice,’ often expressing their take on an issue. (Dendrinos, 2014: 152) The mediators’ task is not limited to mere transference of all they hear or read, but rather requires the selection of which messages from the original texts will be relayed into the target text on the basis of certain criteria, i.e. what might interest the target audience or might be relevant to the new context of situation. Translation typically involves the transference of written or spoken source language texts to equivalent written or spoken target language texts. The final outcome is a text which is a ‘representation’ or ‘reproduction’ of an original produced in another language (House, 2001: 247) or as Federici (2007: 154) puts it, ‘the translator’s path is paved by the author’s steps’. In fact, the concept of ‘derived text’ (Sager, 1982) fits perfectly into any discussion of translation. This particular concept echoes the ‘continued existence of the original text’ (Sager, 1982: 14) whose meanings are manifested in the target text. Thus, the very purpose of translation is the production of configurations which are as close as possible to the original, i.e. to the source text (Dendrinos, 2014). This view is also underlined by Lefevere (1992: xi), who describes translation as ‘a rewriting of an original text’ to conform to certain purposes instituted by the receiving system (Inaba, 2009), and by Newmark (1995: 7), who

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defines translation as an attempt to replace a written message and/ or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another. Additionally, Lefevere (1992) states that the original text is always present – i.e. transferred – in the translated text, but in a rewritten form; it has been moulded and reshaped for the target audience. Similarly, while Federici (2007: 149) argues that the reader can understand the text through the translator’s work of ‘reproduction’ and rewriting in another language, Bassnett (1996: 12) claims that translation ‘injects new life blood into a text by bringing it to the attention of a new world of readers in a different language’. In much the same vein, Angelelli (2003: 16) states that the main goal of translation is ‘faithfulness to content, a sense of the message, and accuracy’ and regards the interpreter as a ‘languageswitching operator’. While reproduction of a text establishing equivalents between two texts is the very essence of translation, mediation as viewed in this book involves the relaying of certain pieces of information from a source text to a target text. In other words, depending on the communicative purpose set by the task (e.g. to inform, to narrate, to advise, to present), the mediator may use only some pieces of the source text information, transforming them or adjusting them to fit the communicative encounter. It is relevant to refer to the process of selection, which constitutes an important parameter of the mediation process. The mediator selects which messages serve his/her own communicative purpose and conveys only those in the target text. On the contrary, the translator does not have such ‘freedom’ and must remain faithful to the source content when transmitting the information. Although he/she may be involved in a selection process, taking into account potential linguistic and/or cultural incompatibilities between the two languages, this is limited to single words or phrases (rather than to the level of meanings or messages, as is the case in mediation). Translators’ insertions or omissions are usually limited to the level of sentence rather than the level of ideas. Apart from this, the nature of the translation process requires that source content must be transferred intact, although culturally adapted, and any type of additions or deletions should not alter the original messages. Mediators may change the discourse, genre or register of the source text on the basis of their communicative goal. In other words, the mediation product may be different from the source text in terms of content, discourse, genre, register and function, while the translator is not allowed to intervene that much; instead, his/her role is limited to resorting to some necessary changes and adaptations at the level of words,

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phrases or sentences, but still producing a text with the same effect, with the same content or of the same genre as the source text so that the new text will constitute an articulation of the same discourse as the original. In the case of translation, the input becomes output written in a language different from the source text language. In contrast, the mediator may use the source text as a prompt in order to produce a totally different text. In translation studies, translation is regarded as a professional and highly specialised activity that requires training and special expertise. This is in line with Toury’s (1998, found in Federici, 2007: 152) claim that ‘translation is certainly a highly skilled activity, a first-class art based on a high level of competence not only in the two languages but in both cultures’. Similarly, Risku (2002: 527), commenting on the professional nature of translation, points out that it is ‘a professional, “artificial” activity that is taught, commissioned, negotiated, […] and paid’. Interlingual mediation, by contrast, is viewed herein as an everyday social activity (cf. Dendrinos, 2006) in which any user of a given language may be involved to enable an interested party access to pieces of information which could not be understood otherwise or to facilitate communication across different languages. Evidently then, the nature of the skills that come into play in order to translate and those needed in order to mediate in different social encounters is also different. In order for a translator (or an interpreter) to be successful in completing his/her task, he/she needs to develop a variety of special skills and expertise that an (interlinguistic) mediator, as viewed herein, does not need to develop. In order, for example, to provide the gist of an English message to Greek friends or parents, a person does not need to know how to use specific terminology or to guarantee certain neutrality and distance from his/her own mother tongue – skills that a translator needs to possess. The distinction between professional translation and mediation has also been raised by Dévény (2013), who – although he sees mediation as an activity involving the reproduction of source meanings – insists that developing foreign language mediation skills is not equal to the training of professional translators and interpreters. It is a different area, so it would be advisable to include the methods of mediation-skill-development in teacher-training courses. (Dévény, 2013: 329) Last but not least, a basic difference between mediation as understood in the present work and translation is that mediation may be both

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interlingual (i.e. across languages and cultures) and intralingual (i.e. within the same language), while translation is by definition an interlinguistic activity, occurring only across languages and cultures. An instance of mediated communication across languages may be when a non-English speaker asks his/her English-speaking friend to explain the content of an English website text relevant to environmental pollution in order that he/ she may use it for a class assignment. To cite some examples concerning intralingual mediation, a mother may sum up for her child the plot of a novel she recently came across; a doctor may interpret the test results to his/her patient, transferring information from a highly specialised text. Bell (1991) and Catford (1965) provide illustrative definitions of translation, stressing its interlingual character. Bell (1991: xv) actually regards translation as the transformation of a text originally in one language into an equivalent text in a different language, retaining, as far as possible, the content of the message and the formal features and functional roles of the original text. In much the same vein, Catford (1965: 20) explains that translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (i.e. the source language) by equivalent textual material in another language (i.e. the target language). Retaining his/her own identity and participating at the same time in two cultures, the role of mediator is to make the target audience understand information that otherwise would be impossible for them to understand. In fact, the mediator is not considered as a neutral third party but as an active participant in the communicative encounter, one who takes an active, responsive attitude towards the source text. Moreover, being responsible for bridging potential gaps and interpreting social meanings for somebody else, the mediator, who is the most powerful participant and the central figure in the communicative event, intervenes in order to assist. Although the notion of assistance basically implies a situation of power imbalance (Alexieva, 1997: 169) between participants, mediation could be seen in this context as an effort to neutralise this imbalance or asymmetry with a view to making the powerless feel more comfortable with the general situation they are going through. Besides, such ‘inequality’ is seen as a prerequisite of mediation: If no difference or gap between interlocutors existed, mediation would not take place. In fact, this is in line with Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of ‘outsidedness’, which also implies a certain inequality between interlocutors.

Conclusion The present chapter has explained the origins of the term ‘mediation’ and discussed the different meanings that it takes in a variety of disciplines

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(i.e. conflict resolution studies, communication and media studies, society and education, philosophy, translation studies and foreign language pedagogy). In addition, mediation, which is viewed as an everyday social practice, is sharply distinguished from translation and interpretation, a discussion which contributes to a better understanding of the notion. Chapter 3 discusses the way that mediation is theorised and distinguishes between mediation and other activities of parallel language use (such as code-switching, code-mixing and intercomprehension).

Notes (1)

‘Translation’ is the noun connected to the Latin verb transferre, meaning not only the action of translation but also the action of carrying something from one point to another (cf. Federici, 2007). (2) In Modern Greek, the word ‘proxenos’ is used to refer to a diplomat, or a mediator between countries, who caters for the national interests of his or her own country. (3) See Council of Europe webpage: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/cooperation/cepej/ mediation/default_en.asp. (4) Mediation in civil and commercial matters. In the European Commission’s webpage. See: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/08/263&fo rmat=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en. (5) For the key components of the directive, see http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleases Action.do?reference=IP/08/628&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLa nguage=en. (6) For an extensive discussion of the mediation strategies needed in resolving conflicts, see Silbey and Merry (1986). Bowling and Hoffman (2003, found in McGuigan, 2009: 349) also discuss a variety of strategies that the mediator uses when he/she intervenes in order to resolve a dispute: active listening, reframing and helping parties generate options, developing a deeper understanding of why and how mediation operates, developing an awareness of how his/her own qualities influence the mediation process. (7) Note that a number of different approaches have been adopted over the years in an effort to build theory in mediation (Parker, 1991: 121) within the framework of conflict resolution studies. (8) As Agusti-Panareda (2005: 267) informs us, community mediation is a movement that emerged in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, aspiring ‘to build a justice system under the authority and normative order of the community rather than that of the state’, in order to handle local problems in the community (Merry & Milner, 1995: 10). The goal of community mediation is to eliminate physical, linguistic, cultural and economic barriers between people participating in certain communities and to preserve individual interests. It has also been referred to as ‘informal justice’ (Matthews, 1988: 1) and ‘neighbourhood justice’ (Pavlich, 1996: 9). It is regarded as an attractive alternative to the traditional system of justice, which usually entangles parties in a lengthy, formal and costly process. (9) For instance, fights in the schoolyard, racial slurs, bullying, threats and harassment that may lead to physical or verbal violence are typical conflicts that can be successfully resolved through mediation. The most popular conflict resolution

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(10) (11) (12) (13) (14)

(15) (16)

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training programme in schools today, especially those in Western societies, is probably peer mediation (Johnson et al., 1995a), which is basically a structured process in which a neutral or impartial student assists two or more students who are in conflict to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement. Researchers have focused on the impact of a negotiation and mediation training programme on students constructively managing their conflicts with classmates (cf. Johnson et al., 1992) or the effectiveness of peer-mediation programmes in general (cf. Turnuklu et al., 2009a, 2009b). ‘Mediatisation’, ‘remediation’, ‘transmediation’ are some other terms found in the recent literature and illustrate the increase of media influence in social life and reality. For an extensive discussion of the characteristics of the ‘public sphere’ as viewed by Habermas, see Nathans (1990) and Fraser (1990). For a collection of papers relevant to Habermasian ‘public sphere’, see Calhoun (1992). See also ‘Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention’ by D. Keller. http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/habermas.htm. For a discussion of Hegel’s philosophy of religion where the concept of mediation is central, see De Nys (1986). In 1994, on the initiative of Austria and the Netherlands, with special support from France, eight states founded the ECML as an enlarged partial agreement of the Council of Europe. As mentioned in Zarate et al. (2008), the aim of the ECML has been to offer (through international workshops, colloquies, research and development networks and other expert meetings) a platform and a meeting place for officials responsible for language policy, specialists in didactics and methodology, teacher trainers, textbook authors and other multipliers in the area of modern languages. For further information on mediation in the Romanian curricula for modern languages, see Neagu (2008). Certain research results presented in this book have been creatively exploited for the grading of descriptors for the IFLC.

3 Theorising Mediation Introduction This chapter defines cross-language (interlinguistic) mediation and discusses the characteristics of the product of mediation as viewed in this book. Mediation is seen as a purposeful social activity (Dendrinos, 2006) which language users become involved in when there is a gap in communication. Since it involves the interplay between languages, it is also regarded as a form of translanguaging (cf. Stathopoulou, 2013a), defined by Baker (2001: 292) as the ‘concurrent use of two languages, which may involve random switching to a more justifiable purposeful use of each language, varying the language of input and output in a lesson’. The definition of translanguaging, which implies a composite set of diverse language resources at the disposal of users who may select from its myriad of available options according to their communicative needs (Coste & Simon, 2009: 172), is used (and further extended herein) to account for interlingual mediation. While translanguaging has been primarily discussed within the context of bilingual education (Cummins, 2007, 2005; García, 2007, 2011; García & Li Wei, 2014) and has been described as a discursive norm among bilinguals, in this work it is further extended to foreign language education, and it has been used to theorise interlingual mediation in particular. It is explained that the term ‘translanguaging’ not only addresses the everincreasing ‘globalization of communicative practices and social formations that result from the increasing mobility of people, languages, and texts’ (Jacquemet, 2005: 261), but it also captures this fluidity and movement between languages, which are not seen as systems of rules but as meaningmaking, semiotic systems used to meet certain communication needs in today’s multilingual societies. As a matter of fact, given that the term ‘translanguaging’ is by nature linked to bi-/multilingual education as explained in this chapter, by using the particular term, language polyphony and diversity in a given community are recognised, and all languages are seen as equal. In addition, cross-language mediation is distinguished from other types of languaging or language practices1 (i.e. code-switching, code-crossing, code-mixing, intercomprehension, etc.) which involve the intermittent, 37

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parallel and blended use of two or more languages and have been coined to describe new forms of communication emerging in today’s pluralist and polycentric societies and account for speakers’ fusion of different codes (May, 2014). The Bakhtinian terms of ‘dialogue’, ‘hybridity’ and ‘heteroglossia’ have also been exploited in order to further theorise and describe the nature of the mediation process and product. As a matter of fact, the outcome (or product) of mediation, i.e. a text which has resulted from a creative dialogue between two texts (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) written in different languages, is also considered in this work to be ‘hybrid’, incorporating source text content [and/or] generic or lexico-grammatical features (Bakhtin, 1986, 1981).

The Practice of Mediation in Today’s Multicultural Milieus In recent years, population mobility and the mingling of people with different languages and cultures have resulted in inevitable cross-cultural contact among diverse groups from different ethnic, social and linguistic backgrounds. National boundaries have become permeable as people, goods and ideas easily flow across them (de Saint-Georges & Weber, 2013; Van Els, 2005),2 while languages and cultures have become hybrid because of this fluid flow of social and economic relationships (Canagarajah & Said, 2010; Hambye & Richards, 2012). The transnational processes, in which people from different backgrounds move across their traditional group boundaries to come into close contact with each other, are also transforming the communicative environment and mode in late modernity, as Li Wei and Hua (2013: 518) point out. Multilingual societies are thus being developed, and the need to maintain social inclusion is being strengthened, as also stated by the European Commission (2011). The multilingualism that already prevails in some countries and regions is increasing further due to the high number of migrants and the EU principle of free movement of citizens. In this context, and according to other sources of information, such as the conclusions of the latest Eurobarometer3 on language use and competence in Europe, there is still a lot of work to do to foster multilingualism and its social inclusion perspective. (European Commission, 2011: 10) The development of multilingual societies due to socio-economic changes because of globalisation brings to the fore people’s strong need to

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communicate effectively in intercultural contact situations. Referring to this mingling of languages, Van Els (2005) aptly describes the situation in the European Union and discusses how multilingualism is generally seen in Europe, while Jacquemet (2005: 261) argues that contemporary studies on language and communication should address the progressive globalisation of communicative practices and social formations that result from the increasing mobility of people, languages and texts. Shohamy (2006a: 13) also comments on the newly emerged communicative contexts by referring to examples of mediated language use and mixing of languages in everyday life. In many situations, information from the Internet is obtained in one language while discussion about it is conducted in another language, pointing to the constant mix of languages and codes. In the public domain too, a variety of languages and codes are used simultaneously and organically as indicated in the languages of public signs, names of stores, streets, public announcements and advertisements. In addition, Jacquemet (2005: 265) aptly describes the context in which language users communicate nowadays and mentions that ‘the “transidiomatic practices” are the results of the co-presence of multilingual talk (exercised by de/reterritorialised speakers) and electronic media, in contexts heavily structured by social indexicalities and semiotic codes’. It thus becomes evident that in this new context, it is very likely that a person will be called on to act as a mediator, i.e. to find himself/herself in a situation in which he/she has to serve as a linguistic and cultural bridge between individuals who do not share the same language and relay messages from one language to the other for a given communicative goal. The practice of mediation, with which this book is concerned, is regarded as an important aspect of human intercultural communication. In today’s multilingual and multicultural contexts, being able to cope with multiple intercultural experiences and to mediate effectively seem to be a prerequisite for individuals’ successful participation in them. Language users are actually required to be equipped with the necessary intercultural tools, such as ‘sociolinguistic sensitivity’,4 mediation and negotiation skills, and language and cultural awareness, which will enable them to be effective in relaying information from one language to another, filling communication gaps and moving effectively across codes. Ultimately, they should be able to mobilise their linguistic resources to (re)construct different relations and meanings within a specific social context and possess the creative qualities of language mixing and hybridisation (Li Wei & Hua, 2013: 519).

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Mediation as Translanguaging Practice Being concerned with the purposeful relaying of information from one language to another, mediation is considered herein to be a translanguaging practice, a view which is in accordance with that of García et al. (2011), who define translanguaging as a hybrid practice of languaging and an act of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages in order to maximise communicative potential (García, 2009a, 2009b).

‘Translanguaging’: A brief history Defining the notion Baker (2011: 288) regards translanguaging as the process of making meaning, shaping experiences and gaining understanding and knowledge through two languages. Similarly, Gort and Pontier (2012: 4) point out that bilinguals translanguage as a way to make meaning in their multilingual environments, and that they engage in hybrid language use, which is a systematic, strategic and sense-making process facilitating their communication goals. The mixing of languages is regarded as ‘a legitimate act that does not result in penalties but rather is an effective means of expressing and communicating ideas’ (Shohamy, 2011: 427). In addition, Canagarajah (2011: 401) defines translanguaging as ‘the ability of multilingual speakers to shuttle between languages treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an integrated system’. Li Wei and Hua (2013: 532) also view translanguaging not simply as the mixing of forms from diverse language sources, but also as involving a variety of identity articulations and negotiations within newly created social spaces. According to these authors, these identities are neither static nor monolithic, but rather dynamic and complex. Li Wei and Hua (2013: 532) move on to argue that the process of creating a new transnational space through translanguaging is a process of language socialisation, a view which draws attention to the socialisation perspective of translanguaging and emphasises its transformative impact. ‘Translanguaging’, the term that has been chosen to use in this book to theorise mediation and ‘describe language fluidity and movement’ (Creese & Blackledge, 2010a: 112), accounts for the capacity of a language user to draw on his/her multiple linguistic and cultural resources – whatever they may be – in order to communicate. García and Kano (2014: 260) point out that translanguaging is rooted in the principle that bilingual speakers

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select language features from a repertoire and ‘soft assemble’ their language practices in ways that fit their communicative situations (translanguaging as soft-assembled mechanism). Li Wei (2011) very aptly explains the three meanings implicit in the ‘trans’ prefix in translanguaging. The first meaning is related to the act of movement across languages, modalities and communicative contexts. The second refers to the transformative nature of the particular act; it actually transforms the speaker’s skills, attitudes and beliefs, thus creating a new identity for the multilingual speaker. The last meaning is related to the transdisciplinarity of the act. As regards the latter, Li Wei and Hua (2013: 520) comment by saying that ‘a translanguaging perspective sees multilingual practices as a window to human sociality, human cognition, social relations, and social structures’. Li Wei (2011a) has also described translanguaging as the process involved not only in moving between different linguistic structures and systems – including different modalities (i.e. speaking, writing, signing, listening, reading) – but also in going beyond them. Li Wei moves on to say that translanguaging includes the full range of linguistic performances of multilingual language users for purposes that transcend the combination of structures, the alternation between systems, the transmission of information and the representation of values, identities and relationships. (Li Wei, 2011a: 1222) In the literature, one can find a variety of new terms which are related to translanguaging and shift the emphasis from languages as systems to resources. Two of these are ‘polylanguaging’ and ‘metrolingualism’, which will be briefly defined to better understand the process of languaging across languages. ‘Polylanguaging’ (or polylingual languaging), a term used by Jørgensen (2010, 2008; Jørgensen et al., 2011; Jørgensen & Møller, 2012), occurs when speakers employ the linguistic resources at their disposal which are associated with different languages, including cases in which their language competence in a given language is only limited. The use of features from several ‘different languages’ in the same production may be frequent and normal, especially in in-group interaction, even when the speakers’ linguistic competence in the languages involved is limited (Ag & Jørgensen, 2013: 528). It becomes evident that the emphasis is put on the features that speakers employ rather than on the languages involved. Møller (2008: 218) asks:

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What if the participants do not orient to the juxtaposition of languages in terms of switching? What if they instead orient to a linguistic norm where all available linguistic resources can be used to reach the goals of the speaker? Then it is not adequate to categorise this conversation as bilingual or multilingual, or even as language mixing, because all these terms depend on the separatability of linguistic categories. I therefore suggest the term polylingual instead. One of the most interesting points in the view of polylanguaging as mentioned above has been raised by Sebba (2012), who states that the act of polylanguaging, i.e. drawing on languages of which we have only a limited knowledge, is an activity available to humanity as a whole, rather than a subset known as ‘bilinguals’ who have sufficient knowledge of two languages. And this is actually what distinguishes it from code-switching as traditionally conceived. As regards the practice of metrolingualism, which is also related to translanguaging as it focuses on ‘languages as emergent from contexts of interaction rather than on languages as systems’ (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010: 246), it has been introduced by Pennycook (2010; Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010, 2011) to capture the hybrid ways in which people exploit the linguistic resources at their disposal in specific loci. Specifically, according to Otsuji and Pennycook (2010: 244), metrolingualism refers to ‘creative linguistic conditions across space and borders of culture, history, and politics, as a way to move beyond current terms such as multilingualism and multiculturalism’.

From a code-based5 view of language(s) to (trans)languaging The term ‘translanguaging’ was introduced as an alternative to codeswitching, i.e. the inclusion of first language (L1) lexico-grammatical elements into a second language (L2) oral or written text (cf. Canagarajah, 1995),6 in order to refer to the alternation of languages and it is being examined both in naturalistic and classroom discourse (cf. Li Wei, 2011b). Shin (2005: 18) has described attitudes towards code-switching as negative, noting that bilinguals themselves ‘may feel embarrassed about their code-switching and attribute it to careless language habits’. As stated by Lewis et al. (2012b: 657), code-switching is the historic construct to which translanguaging, with more positive connotations, appears closely connected. Translanguaging is not seen as a mere switching of languages because it entails more than simply going from one code to another. Rather than focusing on one language, translanguaging makes it clear that there are no clear-cut boundaries between the languages of

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bi-/multilinguals (Creese & Blackledge, 2010b: 549) shifting the attention from language to resources. Elsewhere, it is claimed that code-switching is considered a form of translanguaging (García, 2009a; García et al., 2011). However, Creese and Blackledge (2010b: 549) and García (2009a: 140) point out that code-switching is merely one of the communication practices involved in the process of translanguaging, which is in fact a much larger concept. Regarding this, García (2009a) characteristically points out: Although translanguaging encompasses code-switching and other features of language practices that sociolinguists often study as ‘language contact’, it differs in that the starting point is not language as an autonomous skill. Bilingual people translanguage as they make meaning in speech communities that are, in the 21st century, no longer attached to a national territory, and thus to a single national language. (García, 2009a: 35) Even today, the terms ‘code-switching’ and ‘translanguaging’ are used interchangeably. But, as stressed by García (2014: 74), translanguaging is very different from code-switching in that the former refers not simply to a shift between two languages but also to the use of complex discursive practices that cannot be assigned to either one of the languages involved, yet give voice to oppressed and minoritised language practices. ‘Understanding of translanguaging requires it to have context and not just content, cognitive and cerebral activity and not just about linguistic code, and operate continuously and not just in classrooms’ (Lewis et al., 2012b: 667). In relation to their difference, Lewis et al. (2012b: 659) also point out that ‘there is clearly much overlap between code-switching and translanguaging, with the former a term from linguistics which analyses the speech of bilinguals, while translanguaging is essentially sociolinguistic, ecological, and situated’. They move on to argue that code-switching has associations with language separation while translanguaging celebrates the flexibility in language use and the permeability of learning through two or more languages. Focusing on the American context and aiming at clarifying the difference between code-switching and translanguaging, García states that Translanguaging includes code-switching, the shift between two languages in context, and it also includes translation; however, it differs from both of these simple practices in that it refers to the process by which bilingual students perform bilingually in the myriad ways of classrooms - reading, writing, taking notes, discussing, signing, etc.

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Translanguaging is not only a way to ‘scaffold’ instruction, to make sense of learning and language; rather, translanguaging is part of the metadiscursive regimes that students in the twenty-first century must perform […]. (García, 2011b: 147) Although in naturalistic discourse, the code-switching of bilinguals is considered an asset facilitating communication, in educational contexts, it remains a contentious issue (cf. Macaro, 2005), probably because it was believed to restrict the exposure that the learner has to the L2. Creese and Blackledge (2008) used the term ‘separate bilingualism’ to describe language learning classroom contexts in complementary schools where teachers insist that the target language be used exclusively. However, there are scholars who stress the role of the L1 as a facilitative tool towards the acquisition of the L2 (cf. Auberbach, 1993; Canagarajah, 2005; Lucas & Katz, 1994; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1992; Stapa & Majid, 2009) and that skills and language awareness developed in the L1 can be positively transferred to the L2 (cf. Cummins, 1991, 2007). Research has put emphasis on the functions of code-switching (cf. Appel & Muysken, 1995; Klimpfinger, 2007; Lin, 2008; Musk, 2010; Polio & Duff, 1994), on whether and why code-switching occurs (cf. Bonacina-Pugh, 2013) or on the reasons why teachers or learners code-switch (as, for example, to build personal relationships with learners, to exemplify complex procedures and to check understanding) (cf. Heredia & Altarriba, 2001; Macaro, 2000) and when (cf. Woodall, 2002), as well as what learners (cf. Duff & Polio, 1990; Macaro, 1997) or teachers (Van der Meij & Zhao, 2010) think about code-switching in the classroom setting.7 Note, however, that while research on code-switching has mainly focused on issues of linguistic interference, transfer or borrowing (Hornberger & Link, 2012: 3), putting the focus on translanguaging, a much broader notion, ‘shifts the lens from cross-linguistic influence’ to how multilinguals ‘intermingle linguistic features that have hereto been administratively or linguistically assigned to a particular language or language variety’ (García, 2009a: 51).

Translanguaging in language education Shifting our attention to language education, the term ‘translanguaging’ was coined by Williams (1994, 1996, 2002), who regards it as a bilingual pedagogy that alternates language modes (cf. Baker, 2001, 2003; García, 2009a).8 In Wales, as Garcia et al. (2006: 14) inform us, translanguaging techniques are increasingly used to develop two languages with students listening to discourse presented in one language and working in the other.

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In other words, the input (i.e. the reading or listening text) is in one language and the output (i.e. spoken or written text) is in the other language. The term has been variously extended to refer to the interplay of languages in order to communicate.9 Translanguaging may actually involve the teacher asking a question in the source language and expecting the learners to answer in the target language, which is also the case with interlingual mediation when it occurs in the classroom. Also, it may involve students using both languages in order to convey a single meaning, or the teacher giving a definition or a clarification in one language, while the discussion is in the other language. Lewis et al. (2012b) characteristically mention that in the classroom, translanguaging tries to draw on all the linguistic resources of the child to maximise understanding and achievement. Thus, both languages are used in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner to organise and mediate mental processes in understanding, speaking, literacy, and, not least, learning. (Lewis et al., 2012b: 655) García and Kano (2014: 261) define translanguaging as a process by which ‘students and teachers engage in complex discursive practices that include all language practices of students in order to develop new language practices and sustain old ones, communicate appropriate knowledge, and give voice to new sociopolitical realities by interrogating linguistic inequality’. In other words, bilingual students ultimately use ‘these complex and fluid discursive practices to perform their learning— reading, writing, listening, discussing, taking notes, writing reports and essays, and taking exams’ (García, 2014: 74). All languages are ‘needed’ as Creese and Blackledge (2010a: 112) state, for meanings to be conveyed and negotiated. Translanguaging as pedagogy was initially related to bilingual education and refers to ‘building bilingual students’ language practices flexibly in order to develop new understandings and new language practices’ (García et al., 2012: 52). According to García (2008: 387), in a classroom that favours translanguaging, the teacher serves as both the content teacher and the language teacher. She distinguishes between (a) developmental bilingual education programmes or two-way dual language bilingual education programmes and (b) transitional bilingual education programmes. In both cases, two languages are used in instruction, but in the former the goal is to develop learners’ bilingualism and biliteracy, while in the latter the goal is simply to encourage a shift from the use of a minority language to the use of a majority language. García et al. (2011) also note that in the

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aforementioned cases, translanguaging between the teacher and students usually serves the following purposes: to mediate understanding (e.g. children’s translations and interpretations to mediate with others and oneself); to construct meaning (when children make use of the language not being used in instruction); to include (being responsive to perceived interlocutor’s dominant language); to exclude (e.g. other children from interaction) and show knowledge (e.g. by trying out the words they know). (García et al., 2011: 1–2) Accentuating the positive effects of translanguaging, Creese and Blackledge (2010b: 556) affirm that there is no evidence that translanguaging practice is oppositional to the development of proficiency in standard or non-standard varieties of individual languages. In practice, translanguaging repertoires unproblematically incorporate linguistic items from a range of sources which do not require singular proficiency. Baker (2011) refers to the advantages of translanguaging as a pedagogic practice in bilingual classrooms. She characteristically says that it promotes a deeper understanding of the subject matter, contributes to the development of the weaker language, supports home–school links and facilitates the cooperation between fluent speakers and early learners in the classroom. Similarly, Hornberger (2005: 607, cited in Creese & Blackledge, 2010a: 106) notes that ‘bi/multilinguals’ learning is maximized when they are allowed and enabled to draw from across all their existing language skills (in two+ languages), rather than being constrained and inhibited from doing so by monolingual instructional assumptions and practices’. Hornberger and Link (2012) also suggest that developing awareness of and an orientation to translanguaging and transnational literacies in classrooms with students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds can provide practitioners, teachers, and researchers with a fuller understanding of the resources students bring to school and help us identify ways in which to draw on these resources for successful educational experiences. (Hornberger & Link, 2012: 4) According to García et al. (2011: 8) ‘translanguaging, if properly understood and suitably applied in schools, can in fact enhance cognitive, language and literacy abilities’. García (2009a: 153) also refers to translanguaging as a way to develop learners’ metalinguistic understanding and metacognitive

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awareness, important for bilingually educated individuals in the 21st century. Of course, García and Sylvan (2011) suggest that translanguaging operates best in a context where the following principles are engaged: collaboration between teachers and students, learner centeredness, language and content integration, experiential learning and local autonomy and responsibility. García (2014: 60) also maintains that language teaching that does not include translanguaging practices restricts students’ voices, knowledge, opportunities and imagination, and does not support their bilingual advancement in today’s globalised world. Finally, the importance of translanguaging in bilingual education is also emphasised by Lewis et al. (2012b): Translanguaging in bilingual education generally stresses bilingual processes in learning rather than just bilingual outcomes. It accents that two (or more) languages are not just the result of bilingual education but the very nature of how a bilingual thinks, understands, and achieves. (Lewis et al., 2012b: 667)

Mediation and the notion of ‘(trans)languaging’ Being concerned with the purposeful transferring of information from one language to another, cross-language mediation, as already stated, is considered a form of translanguaging, a language practice which involves the interplay of linguistic codes. Translanguaging, according to García and Li Wei (2014: 42), liberates language from structuralist-only or mentalist-only or even social-only definitions and ‘it signals a transsemiotic system with many meaning-making signs, primarily linguistic ones that combine to make up a person’s semiotic repertoire. Languages then are not autonomous and closed linguistic and semiotic systems’. The view of mediation as a form of translanguaging which involves some type of alternation of languages is based on a view of languages and cultures not as being compartmentalised, but rather as meaning-making, semiotic systems interrelated with one another (Li Wei & Hua, 2013). García (2007: xiii) actually uses the term ‘translanguaging’ to describe the usual and normal practice of ‘bilingualism without diglossic functional separation’, thus suggesting that moving between languages is a natural practice. In fact, the term ‘translanguaging’, echoes a reorientation towards the understanding of language as a process – i.e. ‘languaging’ – rather than treating it as a system (‘language’). This verbalisation indicates a shift of understanding from language as a static ‘object’ or ‘code’, to a process

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(Becker, 1991, cited in Jaworski, 2012: 5) or practice and action, as García (2011b, 2011c) would put it. According to Jørgensen and Juffermans (2011), A languaging perspective sees language in actual practice not as bounded, countable entities that are given in the world, but as dynamic, creative potential to produce meaning through the use of arbitrary signs. A languaging perspective conceptualizes language as a verb (as practice or behavior), rather than as a noun (a thing or object) and places the activity and the agents (languagers) in focus rather than the linguistic system (languages). (Jørgensen & Juffermans, 2011) ‘Languaging’ is regarded by Swain et al. (2009) as the holistic process through which we gain understanding, make sense, communicate and shape our knowledge and experience through the use of language. In addition to this, García and Li Wei (2014: 8) characteristically state that ‘the term languaging is needed to refer to the simultaneous process of continuous becoming of ourselves and of our language practices, as we interact and make meaning in the world’. Similarly, Maturana and Varela (1998: 234–235, as cited in García & Leiva, 2014) state that ‘by languaging the act of knowing, in the behavioral coordination which is language, brings forth a world. We work out our lives in a mutual linguistic coupling, […] because we are constituted in language in a continuous becoming that we bring forth with others’. As Sebba (2012: 113) observes, what the languaging terms, i.e. ‘translanguaging’, ‘polylanguaging’ and, I would add, ‘metrolingualism’ have in common is that they highlight ‘the playful, creative and transgressive aspects of language, dismissing and disrespecting (among other things) the monolingual norm’. In contrast, the traditional view of ‘code-switching’ and the other code-based terms, despite their apparent emphasis on bilingualism, ‘preserve a monolingual bias’ (Sebba, 2012: 112). In addition, the terms ‘polylanguaging’, ‘metrolingualism’ and of course ‘translanguaging’ share one common feature: They echo ‘a non-separatist approach to the use of language(s)’, as Dendrinos (2012b) would put it. According to Blackledge et al. (2013: 61), ‘the shared perspective represented in the use of these terms considers that meaning-making is not confined to the use of “languages” as discrete, enumerable, bounded sets of linguistic resources’. While in the past it was argued that languages should be kept separate in the learning and teaching of languages (cf. Jacobson & Faltis, 1990), the importance of ‘bilingual instructional strategies that teach explicitly for two-way crosslanguage transfer’ (Creese & Blackledge, 2010a: 106) is currently being stressed through the introduction of the new ‘languaging’ terms, one of

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which is translanguaging. Canagarajah (2006a: 603) characteristically states that L1 and culture should be treated as a resource, rather than a problem, and diverse literacy traditions should be accommodated and not kept divided and separate. Similarly, Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 36) argue for language policy in education which focuses on ‘translingual language practices rather than language entities’. The words of Becker (1995, as cited in García & Leiva, 2014: 202) are relevant when he mentions that to learn a new way of languaging is not only to become familiar with a new code but it is to deal with another history of interactions and cultural practices and to learn ‘a new way of being in the world’ (Becker, 1995: 227). The aforementioned views are in line with those of Heller (2007: 1) who argues for an approach to researching multilingualism which moves away from a highly ideologised view of coexisting linguistic systems, to a more critical approach which situates language practices in social and political contexts, and which ‘privileges language as social practice, speakers as social actors and boundaries as products of social action’. Generally, as found in Ag and Jørgensen, the concept of language as separable into distinct ‘languages’ is increasingly rejected by current sociolinguistics (cf. Jørgensen, 2010) as a valid representation of real life language use. Speakers do not use ‘languages’, they use linguistic features which are in turn associated with ‘languages’. Speakers are languagers and what they do is languaging (Jørgensen, 2010). (Ag & Jørgensen, 2013: 526) (my emphasis added) By viewing mediation as a form of translanguaging, emphasis is placed on the use, the user (i.e. the ‘translanguager’) and the process (i.e. ‘translanguaging’) in which he/she is involved when relaying information from one language into another, rather than on the language as a system of rules. What matters is ‘the agency of speakers in an ongoing process of interactive meaning-making’ as García and Li Wei (2014: 9) put it. Needless to say, neither the speakers nor the language(s) they use exist in a vacuum; rather, language is used for specific purposes in specific contexts. Regardless of what the language is, every single language form is determined by a particular set of social circumstances, shaped by the particular context in which it occurs. It is also important to note that the aforementioned statements about (trans)languaging and (trans)languagers seem to be related to the Hallidayan view of language, also followed in this work, which sees language as a result of choices available to the speaker/writer in order to express his/her meanings in a given situation. This particular view implies that language

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exists and therefore must be studied in context and that language is ‘a social semiotic resource people use to accomplish their purposes by expressing meanings in context’ (Ming, 2007: 74). Elaborating more on this, as is true for any instance of human communication, every instance of mediated communication always presupposes a speaker/writer and a listener/reader. In other words, mediated communication always implies an interlocutor, as it is always addressed to someone, which means that ‘we have at the very least the microsociety formed by two persons, the producer and the receiver’ (Todorov, 1984: 43). Thus, meaning resulting from mediated communication can be said to be unique to the extent that it belongs to the linguistic interaction of specific individuals within specific social contexts aiming at achieving specific goals. The inextricable link of language to the context in which it is produced is echoed in this work not only by viewing mediation as a form of translanguaging, but also by considering it as social practice, a perspective which is explained in the next section.

Mediation as Social Practice Another important aspect of mediation as understood in this book is its social situatedness. Mediation, which always occurs in a social context, is considered to be a purposeful activity or social practice in which language users may become involved when there is a communication gap. Its products cannot be seen in isolation from the situation in which they are produced. Mediators, whose actions are situated in a social context (not only the immediate context – i.e. time, place, people – but also the wider socio-historical context) and whose roles are socially valuable, employ knowledge they have developed through social experience, including their knowledge of discourse conventions and their socio-cognitive knowledge of language’s possible effect on an audience. In performing such acts, mediators engage in a process of communication that involves other people. The socially situated nature of mediation has been stressed by Dendrinos (2006), who explains that mediation is seen as social practice that can be regarded as an activity aiming at the interpretation of (social) meanings which are relayed to others who may not fully comprehend the source text (Dendrinos, 2014). Overall, the mediator is the third party who participates in a negotiation of meanings between languages, codes or idiolects, providing linguistic assistance to a person (or persons) who cannot ‘grasp’ the messages contained in a source text. He/she is actively involved in a decision-making process involving what information to choose to transfer on the basis of the task that he/she has to perform. A mediator is described by Dendrinos (2006: 7) as a situated agent, i.e. a

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social actor, who is part of a wider social context and monitors the process of interaction, intervening in situations which ‘require reconciliation, settlement or compromise of meanings’ in order to help the communicative process. The nature and the degree of this intervention are affected by the social context in which a communicative encounter takes place. According to Lindblom and Ziemke (2002: 71), the characterisation of an agent as ‘situated’ is usually intended to mean that his/her behaviour and cognitive processes first and foremost are the outcome of a close relationship between agent and environment. Dendrinos (2006) not only refers to the role of a mediator as a facilitator in cases when he/she tries to bridge communication gaps between interacting parties, but also as a meaning maker. Dendrinos (2014) moves on to argue that in order to play his/her role effectively, the mediator is required to both understand the meaning of what is said or heard and to select the information that he/she decides is important to transfer, taking into account his/her audience and the purpose of the communication. When we perform as mediators, we become meaning-making agents; that is, we create meaning for someone else, who is unable to understand what is going on, to comprehend a text, whether this is in a language s/he knows well or it is in a foreign language. We create and interpret meanings through speech or writing for our interlocutor(s), with whom we may or may not share linguistic, cultural and/or social experiences. (Dendrinos, 2014: 143) Mediation may occur in many different domains of human activity, i.e. at home, work and school. As users of language(s), members of a given community and persons informed about cultural and social practices, we are all potential mediators (Dendrinos, 2014). In order to underscore the fact that mediation can occur everywhere, in every aspect of the public and private sphere, Dendrinos (2006) also points out that [mediation] happens in the courtroom, where lawyers defend their clients and prosecutors defend the state. The role of mediators is essential in law, diplomacy, politics, advertising, the mass media and all other public and private affairs. It is an important requirement in all types of settings, including the workplace, educational institutions, inside or outside the home. (Dendrinos, 2006: 12) In everyday life, we may frequently assume the role of mediator. We may relay information from one language to another for a given communicative

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purpose (i.e. interlingual mediation with which this work is concerned) or we may relay information within the same language (i.e. intralingual mediation). What may be different in the latter case is the discourse of the source text from which messages are transferred. An example of the former case can be drawn from the present-day Greek experience: Greek people face a new reality with the influx of economic immigrants,10 and it is very common for a Greek user of the English language to assume the role of interlingual mediator in his/her everyday interactions – e.g. to explain, to advise and to assist – and relay messages from a Greek source text into English either orally or in writing. Some examples of intralingual mediation, on the contrary, may be that which takes place between two friends, one of whom relays information from a previously read magazine article in order to warn the other about the dangers of smoking, or the case of a young person being asked by an elderly man to explain the meaning of a piece of graffiti on the road.

Mediation as a Dialogic and Interactive Activity As explained above, given that the mediator draws on a source text from which he/she extracts information in order to use it in his/her own text for a given communicative purpose, the mediation product cannot be considered in isolation as it is always in a constant dialogic relationship with the source text, borrowing messages from it. As a matter of fact, in the case of interlingual mediation, the cross-language mediator is involved in an interlingual and intercultural dialogue between two worlds, two linguistic environments and two texts with different generic conventions reflecting a multitude of voices (using the Bakhtinian term). While retaining his/her own identity and yet participating at the same time in the target culture, the mediator’s task is to make the target audience understand information that otherwise would be incomprehensible to them. In addition, the mediation product is in a dialogic relationship with the context in which it is produced and which context determines the linguistic choices of the mediator. My understanding of mediation as a dialogic activity is based on Bakhtin’s (1981) work, in which he argues for the dialogic nature of language in general. According to Bakhtin, language is dialogic because understandings, use of words and meanings are shaped by and developed through interactions with the ‘other’. The following sections briefly discuss how the Bakhtinian socio-historical view of language has contributed to the theorisation of mediation in this book.

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The dialogic nature of the mediation process In Bakhtin’s philosophy of language, the concept of dialogue plays the most fundamental role. He actually claimed that language is dialogic because understandings, use of words and meanings themselves are shaped by and developed through interactions with the ‘other’, i.e. the other people who may come from different communities having different ideologies and experiences. In other words, language is produced through a dialogue with the society to which people belong. Even when people write to and for themselves, they use words in ways that they have learned from their communities and cultures (Chapman, 2006). Bakhtinian dialogue may be of two types, i.e. external (i.e. between two different individuals) or internal (i.e. between an earlier and a later self). The concept of dialogue, as initially used by Bakhtin, is also predominant when discussing the nature of texts from a sociolinguistic point of view (cf. Kress, 1985/1989). Referring to the nature of texts, Kress (1985/1989) implies that when participants of a discourse community come into contact with a text, they bring with them knowledge gained from a dialogue with all the previous texts that they have come across in their social history. For Bakhtin, dialogue ‘is not just a mode of interaction but rather a way of communal existence in which people establish a multifaceted relationship of mutual interdependence’ (Kostogriz, 2005: 193). As stated by Marchenkova (2005: 175), ‘dialogue creates the possibility of language; language emerges from dialogue and is its consequence’, while according to Vitanova (2005: 154), dialogue is a socially embedded meaning-making process in a sense that it is impossible to voice oneself without appropriating others’ words. Bakhtin, in other words, used the term ‘dialogic’ ‘to capture the meaning-making process by which the historical and the present come together in an utterance’ (Hall et al., 2005: 3). It is this relationship between the past and the present that gives shape to one’s voice. Similarly, Todorov (1984: x) points out that, ‘a single voice can make itself heard only by blending into the complex choir of other voices already in place’. As Todorov (1984: 62) states elsewhere, every discourse refers to at least two subjects and thus to a potential dialogue between them. It becomes evident from the views presented above that speech does not result from an individual alone but from his/her interaction with a listener; similarly, written texts are the results of the writer’s interaction with his/her intended reader, whose characteristics the writer takes into account when producing his/her message. Particularly in the case of mediation, the end product is seen as one that integrates the voice of the

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audience by whom it is intended to be read or heard. Bakhtin (1981, 1986) called this concept ‘addressivity’ or ‘responsiveness’, because discourse is always directed to somebody or as stated by Braxley (2005: 13), ‘it is not designed to dissipate in a vacuum’. Moreover, it can be said that the target text (as a result of mediation) is in a dialogic relationship with the context in which it is produced and which regulates and determines the linguistic choices of the mediator. In other words, it is ‘responsiveness’ or ‘responsive understanding’ (Braxley, 2005: 280) which also determines the final outcome. The target text is oriented towards the addressee, who is part of the wider context in which the text is incorporated. For this reason, Bakhtin (1981, 1986, as cited in Sultana, 2014) has suggested that the focus of any linguistic phenomenon should not be the linguistic features, but the multi-layered meanings underlying the linguistic features. The micro-level details of utterances, such as accents or mixed linguistic forms lead to macro-level dimensions, such as speakers’ perspectives, values, and ideologies that are again influenced by the social, historical, and political dynamics of language. (Sultana, 2014: 42) Particularly as regards mediators, it has become evident that they are involved in some kind of interaction with the given text, and then on the basis of this interaction they produce their own text. The dialogic relationship between the source and the target text also lies in that the former always regulates the latter to such a degree that the target text is considered hybrid (Stathopoulou, 2009), as discussed in the following subsection.

The hybrid source text regulated and the heteroglossic mediation product Shifting attention from the process (i.e. that of creating a mediated text) to the actual product (i.e. the text produced as a result of mediation), the latter is described as being the outcome of a ‘dialogue’ between two texts, i.e. the source and the target text, thereby incorporating a mixture of elements and voices articulated differently from their original form. This interlinguistic interaction between two texts inevitably results in the ‘production of Thirdness’ (Kostogriz, 2005: 198) or a ‘Third Space’ (Bhabha, 1994). ‘Thirdness’ or according to Bakhtin (1985; Lotman, 1990) ‘hybridisation’,11 refers to new texts, meanings and identities that blend the characteristics of two worlds, as in the case of the mediation product. Etymologically, the term derives from the Latin hybrida, which means ‘half-breed’ and was used

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as an insult when referring to someone of mixed racial origin. In Bakhtin’s theory, as Papastergiadis (1997: 267) notes, the ‘doubleness’ of the hybrid voices is constructed not through the integration of differences but ‘via a series of dialogical counterpoints, each set against the other allowing the language to be both the same and different’. Similarly, according to Graham (2000: 22), ‘hybridity’ is one of the terms that complement Bakhtin’s term ‘dialogue’ or ‘dialogism’. Evidence supports the claim that during the process of mediating, the source text necessarily regulates the target text (Stathopoulou, 2009). In fact, my previous research12 has shown that in mediation activities, the control that the source text exerts over the target text results in the production of hybrid formations and structures, some of which are acceptable, others which bear strong traces of the source text language and still others which are considered unacceptable English. A series of factors, such as task and scriptwriter variables, were shown to affect the degree of source text regulation and, consequently, the hybridity of the outcome. Generally speaking, both different degrees of regulation – ranging from strong to weak, depending on the task at hand – and different forms of regulation – i.e. textual and sentential – resulting in different sorts of hybrid formations were found to occur. As regards the types of hybridity which characterise the mediation outcome, what may be evidenced in a mediated instance of language use is lexico-grammatical hybridity and discursive and genre hybridity (also called ‘discourse mixing’ and ‘genre mixing’). Bhatia (1997, 2010) actually regards genre mixing and interdiscursivity as the one presupposing the other, and defines interdiscursivity as a function of the appropriation of generic resources across discursive, professional and cultural practices. The concept of interdiscursivity, which is sometimes subsumed under intertextuality, can be traced back to the works of Bakhtin (1986), Candlin and Maley (1997), Fairclough (1995), Foucault (1981) and Kristeva (1980). Research in discourse and genre mixing is ample (cf. Bhatia, 1997). However, given that there is no consensus in the literature about what exactly ‘genre’ is and what categories of texts can be distinguished, the way that researchers define discourse mixing and genre mixing varies as well. While some scholars regard these two types of hybridity as two sides of the same coin (cf. Bhatia, 1997, 2010), discourse mixing and genre mixing are approached differently by others (Fairclough, 1988). Following Fairclough (1988), for instance, the effects of discourse mixing are related to a pattern of alternation between the conventions of two or more discourse types. In other words, discourse mixing is said to occur when a text combines the discoursal conventions of two or more discourses (e.g. of political and religious discourse). It is

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worth mentioning that Fairclough (2003: 128) argues for an interdiscursive analysis of texts in order to detect instances of the mixing of different discourses. However, further elaboration on this point is not within the scope of this section. Given the dialogic relationship between two texts, as initially explained in this section, the mediation outcome which results from the contact of the two texts can also be characterised as heteroglossic, incorporating ‘a multiplicity of social voices’ (Bakhtin, 1981: 263). ‘Heteroglossia’ is a concept introduced by Bakhtin (1981) to refer to the plurality of voices included in an utterance. According to Bakhtin, every utterance is both heteroglossic, in that it is likely to contain many different voices, and at the same time dialogic since ‘every voice exists in response to or “in dialogue with” other voices’ (Norris & Jones, 2005: 5). Bakhtin (1981, 1986) argues that we never speak in a voice that is purely our own but instead we borrow and assimilate the voices of others. As he puts it, our language is full of other people’s voices and everything is understood as part of a greater whole in which there is constant interaction among meanings, all of which have the potential to influence the others (Iddings et al., 2005: 36). Elaborating on heteroglossia, Todorov (1984: x) points out that, ‘a single voice can make itself heard only by blending into the complex choir of other voices already in place’. Shevtsova (1992: 753) refers to a synthesised voice emerging from the composite blend of word voices, in which none loses its singular voice. The notion of heteroglossia has been discussed in various contexts, including language learning and therapeutic discourse (cf. Hermans, 2001). This particular notion is also implied in Kress’ writings, although he does not use the Bakhtinian term. In fact, Kress (1985/1989: 32) maintains that ‘no text is ever the text of a single speaker or writer. All texts show the traces of differing discourses, contending and struggling for dominance’. Kress then moves on to argue that texts are products of individual speakers, each of whom brings with him/her the knowledge which has been developed from contact with other texts produced by other speakers in a given community. The mediation product, particularly, is regarded as a ‘double-voiced construct’ (Haviara-Kechaidou, 2008: 30), which incorporates a mix of voices by individuals with different sociocultural values and idiosyncrasies coming from different linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds. Lee (2004) uses the term ‘double-voiced’ to refer to all of our utterances that are dialogically linked. As he points out, we carry forward ideas, perspectives and belief systems that we inherit from prior historical conversations, whether we accept or reject those propositions. We ‘carry’ these voices within ourselves, and bring them forward along with our individual

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responses and perspectives. Following this definition, particularly for mediation, the voice of the author of the original text is woven (to a greater or lesser extent, according to the task) into what the mediator writes, as the latter incorporates his/her text material from the original text. Similarly, the voice of the mediator is reflected in the lexico-grammar that she/he chooses in order to communicate the new message. The result is the production of a text which combines elements from two different sources, each of which has its own characteristics. To sum up, the mediation process can be described as a dialogic activity between two texts, each of which has been produced by individuals with different sociocultural values and idiosyncrasies. This dialogic relationship language users are involved in would not exist if there was not a gap between them, which actually derives from the fact that they do not share the same language (i.e. in the case of interlingual mediation). On the other hand, the outcome of this dialogue, i.e. the target text, is regarded as heteroglossic and hybrid as it reflects the mixing of the two texts (i.e. source and target texts) within the boundaries of a single text.

Concluding Remarks Overall, by viewing mediation as a form of translanguaging, as social practice and as a dialogic process, and the mediation outcome as heteroglossic and hybrid, this work favours a non-separatist view of languages, puts emphasis on the process – ‘languaging’ – and stresses the importance of context as a determinant factor on the final outcome. As argued in this chapter, viewing mediation as a translanguaging practice also distances us from connecting with code-based views of language. In fact, although cross-language mediation involves an interplay between two languages, its specific characteristics distinguish it from other acts of parallel use of languages in contexts of cultural diversity (i.e. code-switching, codemeshing,13 code-mixing,14 code-crossing15 and intercomprehension16 ). The main difference between language practices involving the simultaneous use of language and interlingual mediation lies in the fact that while the former entail the alternation,17 mixing and merging of languages, interlinguistic mediation involves the relaying of information from one language to another and the negotiation of meanings in two languages in a given situational context. Dendrinos (2006: 12), who discusses the nature and characteristics of the practice of mediation, states that mediation ‘has to do with negotiation of meanings in social interaction that aims at some sort of reconciliation or compromise between two or more participants in a social event’. Mediators extract messages originally produced in a

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given language in order to produce a second text in another language. This means that the act of mediation always presupposes the existence and use of a source text whose meanings are relayed into the target language for a given communicative purpose. Although interlingual mediation as discussed in this book involves moving between languages, the meaning it takes herein does not echo a code-based view of language. Languages which come into contact are not seen as separate codes but as meaning-making, semiotic systems, interrelated with one another. Individuals who are involved in a process of code-switching, code-crossing, code-mixing and intercomprehension may achieve some degree of communication by activating their whole communicative repertoire. Nevertheless, they do not function as interlingual mediators because, as mentioned earlier, the role of mediator is to negotiate and create meanings which are always dependent on the task that he/she is to perform. Based on the above, what this book and research suggest is the introduction of the non-code-based term ‘cross-language mediation’ into the foreign language teaching and learning literature and its use in a variety of disciplines which deal with issues of languages and communication as it refers to a distinct language practice with specific features.

Notes (1)

Sultana (2014) refers to these language practices as ‘heteroglossic language practices’, while Cenoz and Gorter (2011) refer to them as multilingual language practices. (2) As pointed out by Richardson-Bruna (2007: 234), this process of cross-border movements of goods and information is considered the direct result of the globalisation and internationalisation of systems of production. (3) Special Eurobarometer 243/Wave 64.3 – TNS Opinion & Social ‘Europeans and their Languages’ – February 2006: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf. (Note that Eurobarometer statistics are based on self-reporting and not on any objective testing.) (4) Canagarajah and Said (2010: 161) define sociolinguistic sensitivity as ‘one’s awareness of dialect differences, identity considerations, contextual constraints and cultural sensitivity’. (5) Term borrowed from Orman (2013). (6) As pointed out by Klimpfinger (2007: 37), most research regarding code-switching refers to bilingual speech communities with two or more languages in regular contact. (7) For an extensive review of the research conducted in code-switching, see King and Chetty (2014). (8) It is also referred to in the literature as ‘transcultural repositioning’ (RichardsonBruna, 2007: 235).

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(11)

(12) (13)

(14)

(15)

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Lewis et al. (2012a, 2012b) provide a sketch of the historical context in which translanguaging developed in education, also referring to the origins of the term. Shohamy (2006a: 36–37) distinguishes ‘immigration’ from ‘transnationalism’, the latter being related to those people who change their place of residence from the place they were born continuing at the same time to maintain close connections to their kin society. As pointed out by Richardson-Bruna (2007: 234), the process of cross-border movements of people, goods and information is considered to be the direct result of globalisation and the internationalisation of systems of production. See how hybridity has been defined by cultural theorists in Anthias (2001), Bakhtin (1981), Graham (2000), Hambye and Richards (2012), Haviara-Kechaidou (2008), Kapchan and Strong (1999), Kompridis (2005), Kostogriz (2005), Papastergiadis (1993, 1997), Werbner (1997) and Zauberga (2001). Within the context of language studies (including translation studies and foreign language didactics), hybridity has been discussed and/or investigated by Anchimbe (2007), Canagarajah (2006b), Hyland (2002a), Neubert (2001), Shäffner and Adab (2001a, 2001b), Shohamy (2006a), Shohat and Sham (1994), Simon (2001), Robinson (1995), Snell-Hornby (1992, 2001), among others. These findings have been presented at national and international conferences (see Stathopoulou, 2010a, 2010b). Canagarajah (2006b) discusses ‘code-meshing’ as a strategy which is used by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners when merging local varieties and cultures with Standard English(es), finally producing a hybrid text that contains divergent varieties of English which users of the L2 have brought for certain communicative purposes. Code-meshing is different from code-mixing (cf. Bokamba, 1989; Muysken, 2000; Tay, 1989; Wu, 1985), as the former can include mixtures of larger structural and rhetorical units (Canagarajah, 2006b), while the latter entails the alternating use of two languages in the same speech event (Kamwangamalu, 1992). Canagarajah (2011: 403) also makes a distinction between translanguaging and code-meshing, though the latter is included in the former. He characteristically states that he uses translanguaging for the general communicative competence of multilinguals and code-meshing for the realisation of translanguaging in texts. ‘Code-mixing’ is a (code-based) term found in the literature and refers to the intrasentential use of lexical items from two distinct languages (Kamwangamalu, 1989, 1992; Poplack, 1978). It refers, in other words, to the inclusion of single L1 lexico-grammatical elements in an L2 text. Several scholars do not make a distinction between code-mixing and code-switching (cf. Heredia & Altarriba, 2001), while others claim that a distinction should be made between them (cf. Bokamba, 1988, 1989; Muysken, 2000). For instance, Redouane (2005) sees code-mixing as the process of mixing elements from two languages in one utterance, and code-switching as the product of this mix. Code-crossing concerns the use of languages (or accents) that are generally not recognised as ‘belonging’ to the speaker (Rampton, 1995: 280; 2009: 287) and, as explained by Jaworski (2014: 138), ‘it constitutes acts of identity through ethnic or class re-categorization, testing the permeability of social boundaries, exploring and embracing new identity positions’. ‘Intercomprehension’ refers to a form of communication in which each person uses his/her own language but at the same time understands that of the other (Doyé, 2005: 7) without either person abandoning his/her own language (Candelier

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et al., 2007: 6–7, found in Hidalgo-Downing, 2012: 65). The term has also become central to current discussions of appropriate methodologies in the field of foreign language teaching. Hidalgo-Downing (2012), for instance, highlights the necessity for the development of intercomprehension strategies within the framework of a plurilingual approach to language learning. (17) Musk (2010: 180) uses the term ‘code-alternation’, which occurs when codes are mixed in different ways in the same stretch of talk.

4 Mediation Tasks Introduction Shifting attention from the theorisation of mediation to its actual practice, this chapter explains what mediation tasks generally involve within the framework of foreign language education and presents findings derived from the linguistic description of a number of written mediation tasks. Borrowing Bachman and Palmer’s (1996: 44) definition which is also used in Bachman (2002: 458), task is regarded as ‘an activity that involves individuals in using language for the purpose of achieving a particular goal or objective in a particular situation’. Within our context, these tasks have been carried out in a test situation and can thus be described as ‘assessment tasks’. Interlingual mediation tasks, in particular, are described as those tasks requiring the production of a text in a given language, with ideas, messages and general or detailed factual information purposefully selected from a text in another language either orally or in writing (oral vs written mediation). Production is actually text based, since it involves reading a text in one language – usually an authentic text, such as a magazine or a newspaper article, which serves as a source of information – for the specific purpose of selecting relevant information from it and relaying that information in another language. What is argued in this chapter is that what is ultimately relayed in the target language is dependent on the task at hand, the requirements of which vary across different proficiency levels. This chapter gives an empirically derived classification of mediation tasks in terms of their linguistic and mediatory requirements and, on the basis of evidence, it discusses the demands of mediation tasks at different proficiency levels. Finally, some basic points for teachers to consider when designing mediation tasks for their classes are discussed.

What is a Mediation Task? Definition Mediation tasks are those tasks which require learners to relay information from one language to another for a given communicative 61

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purpose. They can be described as cognitively demanding tasks, as mediators have to use various skills and competences to carry them out (see Appendix 1 for different examples of mediation tasks). Specifically, when language users are asked to complete a mediation task, they first have to understand the information included in the text of a given language and then relay some of its messages in another language in a way that is appropriate to the context of situation. In other words, they are required to select which messages serve the purposes of a specific communicative encounter so as to transfer them appropriately and accurately. The practice of mediation thus entails the use of the target language in particular social contexts in ways that are based on certain social needs. As claimed by Dendrinos (2006), the prerequisite for the successful execution of the task by language users who function as mediators is not only to use their sociolinguistic knowledge or experience and their language awareness, but also to possess the necessary literacy level and the skills to comprehend different kinds of texts in one language. For example, in the Kratiko Pistopiitiko Glossomathias (KPG) exam system, in order to mediate, language users are expected to have the necessary literacy level and the skills to understand multimodal texts in Greek, and to assume a specific role and to address specific readers, conveying specific meaning through a particular type of text or genre (Dendrinos & Mitsikopoulou, in press). To be in a position to do this successfully, they need to activate their language awareness with regard to the specific (source and/or target) genre and their familiarity with the topic. Needless to say, during this process of transferring information from source texts to target texts, mediators need to employ a variety of mediation strategies which will help them to perform the task successfully (Stathopoulou, 2013a). Chapter 5 presents the strategies for the successful execution of tasks. Before discussing from a mediatory point of view the types of mediation tasks in terms of what they require, at this point it is important to distinguish between interlingual mediation tasks (i.e. a user of a target language may communicate meanings to someone who may be from a different ethnic/linguistic/cultural background) which concern us presently and intralingual mediation tasks. While the former involve the relaying of information from one language to another, the latter concern the relaying of information within the same language, from a text for instance written in a different discourse. The text as a result of mediation (i.e. target text) may be in a different mode, genre, register or style than the source text. Dendrinos (2006) also distinguishes between two different types of mediation, namely, verbal mediation – i.e. in cases where the source text is a verbal one – and

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visual mediation – i.e. in cases where the source text is a visual text, for example, a pie chart or graph.

Types of mediation tasks Depending on their mediatory requirements, all mediation tasks (either written or oral) are classified into the following categories: tasks involving (a) summarising, (b) picking-up-information and (c) transferring numerical information into verbal information. Summarising tasks are those requiring the production of a summary in the target language, representing a condensing of information which reflects the gist (central ideas) of the source text. The summarising task, drawn from the KPG task database and described in Figure 4.1, asks candidates to produce a text for a guide recommending two films for children and two for teenagers, giving a brief account of each film. In other words, mediators have to present source information in a condensed or summarised form in order to be successful in their task. In contrast, picking-up-information tasks require the selection of information found in different parts of the source text which may then be regrouped into the target text (in another language), depending on the communicative goal set by the task. As shown in Figure 4.2, candidates are asked to write an email convincing a friend to participate in a programme. Imagine you are part of a team preparing the WHAT’S ON guide for English-speaking visitors to your city. Below is the film section presenting in Greek the films which are now playing. Use the information in Greek to write a text in English (about 150 words) recommending two films for children and two for teenagers. To ΗAIRSPRAY είναι μια κωμωδία που μας μεταφέρει στη δεκαετία του 60, με τα περίεργα χτενίσματα, τα πολύχρωμα ρούχα, τα hits και την τρέλα της εποχής. Σε αυτό το περιβάλλον, μια χοντρούλα προσπαθεί να βρει το δρόμο προς τη διασημότητα…

Στη θαυμάσια αυτή ταινία, με τίτλο Ρατατούη ο πρωταγωνιστής είναι ο Ρεμί, ένας αρουραίος που λατρεύει την καλή κουζίνα. Όταν τον διώχνουν από το σπίτι του, για καλή του τύχη καταλήγει στον υπόνομο κάτω από ένα πολυτελέστατο παριζιάνικο εστιατόριο. Η αγάπη του για το καλό φαγητό θα τον οδηγήσουν στο δικό του παράδεισο, που δεν είναι άλλος από την... κουζίνα. Εκεί θα γνωρίσει τον Λιγκουΐνι, έναν φιλόδοξο νεαρό σερβιτόρο…

Στο SPIDERMAN 3, ο Σπάιντερμαν χαίρεται την ηρεμία του και κάνει σχέδια να παντρευτεί την αγαπημένη του, η οποία όμως αντιμετωπίζει προβλήματα που θα την κάνουν να απομακρυνθεί –κάτι που επιδρά αρνητικά επάνω του. Ως προς την πραγματική δράση ένας νέος εχθρός ονόματι Sandman εμφανίζεται και μια μαύρη ουσία κυριεύει την ψυχή του Σπάιντερμαν…

Στο HAPPY FEET ο μικρός Mumble είναι ένας πιγκουίνος αλλιώτικος από τους άλλους. Ενώ θα έπρεπε να διαθέτει όμορφη και ρυθμική φωνή, αυτός γεννήθηκε χορεύοντας κλακέτες! Οι γονείς του φοβούνται πως δε θα καταφέρει ποτέ να βρει την αληθινή αγάπη χωρίς να ξέρει το 'Τραγούδι της Καρδιάς', ενώ οι συμμαθητές του τον κοροϊδεύουν λόγω της ιδιαιτερότητάς του.

Figure 4.1 KPG May 2008 test paper (B2 level)

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You and your friend Martin have decided to spend part of your summer vacation doing volunteer work. Use information from the site below and write an email (150 words) to Martin. Try to convince him that it’s a good idea for the two of you to take part in the Syros project of the Greek Ornithological Society. Sign as Alex.

Helpful hint Stress those aspects of the project which make it particularly attractive for you. For example:  location  flexible dates  cost  type of work

Πρόγραμμα Περιβαλλοντικής Ενημέρωσης στην Ερμούπολη Σύρου

Περιγραφή εθελοντικής εργασίας: Ενημέρωση και ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού, κατοίκων και επισκεπτών, σχετικά με τα πουλιά του Αιγαίου, τη σημαντική φυσική κληρονομιά της Σύρου, τη φύση και την αξία των μικρών νησίδων και των προστατευόμενων περιοχών. ∆ιάρκεια προγράμματος: 15 Ιουνίου-10 Σεπτεμβρίου Αιτήσεις συμμετοχής: όλο το καλοκαίρι Ελάχιστη διάρκεια εθελοντικής εργασίας: 10 ημέρες Κόστος συμμετοχής στο Πρόγραμμα: ∆ωρεάν συμμετοχή για τα μέλη, 30,00 € για τα μη μέλη (το ποσό περιλαμβάνει την ετήσια συνδρομή μέλους της Ε.Ο.Ε.) ∆ιαμονή: ∆ωρεάν διαμονή σε σπίτι που νοικιάζει η Ε.Ο.Ε. σε κεντρικό σημείο της Ερμούπολης με μπάνιο, κουζίνα και ψυγείο. Οι εθελοντές θα πρέπει να διαθέτουν υπνόσακο. ∆ιατροφή: Η Ε.Ο.Ε. παρέχει βασικά είδη διατροφής. Μετακίνηση: Τα έξοδα μετακίνησης από και προς την Ερμούπολη καλύπτονται από τον εθελοντή. Ασφάλιση: Σε περίπτωση που οι εθελοντές δεν έχουν προσωπική ασφάλιση, θα πρέπει υποχρεωτικά να ασφαλισθούν έναντι ατυχημάτων, επιβαρυνόμενοι με το ποσό των 20,00 €. Βασικές προϋποθέσεις συμμετοχής: Επικοινωνιακές/κοινωνικές δεξιότητες, ομαδικό πνεύμα. Θα προτιμηθούν γκρουπ 2 - 3 φίλων. Στοιχεία επικοινωνίας: τηλ. 210 8228704, εσωτ. 106 και 6948631875

Figure 4.2 KPG May 2009 test paper (B2 level)

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They have to base their writing on the four aspects suggested in the rubrics. This sort of task actually entails both finding and focusing on only the relevant parts of the source text and omitting other parts which do not serve the communicative purpose of the task. In other words, candidates are not asked to transfer the gist but only to selectively relay the relevant information found in different parts of the text. In this case, they have to relay specific information related to the location, flexible dates, cost and type of work. To sum up, as becomes evident from the examples, while picking-upinformation tasks require that only a few bits of information be selected from the source text to be relayed appropriately in a new text, summarising tasks require the production of a text summary or the transference of several bits of information probably combined with extra-textual information on the topic in question. However, apart from the picking-up-information and summarising mediation tasks, there is another category of tasks which entail the transformation and relaying of numerical information into a verbal text (Figure 4.3). In the task given as an example, candidates are asked to produce an article for a European magazine (i.e. verbal text) in which they present the findings of a survey about how young people spend their free time, findings that are presented in the format of a numerical text, i.e. a bar graph.

KPG Written Mediation Task Features Across Proficiency Levels: A Systematic Linguistic Description Aim and data The aforementioned classification of tasks has been derived from a systematic description of written mediation tasks in the KPG exam in English with the ultimate aim to explore what type of language differentiates these tasks and what type of language is likely to be produced by KPG candidates at different proficiency levels. Thirty-two written mediation tasks designed for 14 examination periods for the B2 level, 7 for the B1 level and 11 for the C1 level have been described and analysed on the basis of a predetermined set of task features which are based on a situated view of language and are further discussed in the section that follows. The systematic examination of the characteristics of the KPG written mediation tasks led to the development

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Νέοι και ελεύθερος χρόνος Το θέμα του ελεύθερου χρόνου φαίνεται να απασχολεί όλο και περισσότερο μικρούς και μεγάλους. Πολλά ενδιαφέροντα αποτελέσματα προκύπτουν από έρευνες που μελετούν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο άτομα διαφόρων ηλικιών αξιοποιούν τον ελεύθερο χρόνο που έχουν στη διάθεσή τους. Μια από αυτές έγινε τον περασμένο Δεκέμβρη από το Κέντρο Ερευνών του Ινστιτούτου Νέας Γενιάς με θέμα «Νέοι και Ελεύθερος Χρόνος». Η συγκεκριμένη έρευνα είχε ως στόχο τη διερεύνηση των δραστηριοτήτων 5.000 νέων ανθρώπων που ζουν και εργάζονται στην Ελλάδα, ηλικίας 18-30 ετών. Στον παρακάτω πίνακα παρουσιάζονται αναλυτικά οι δραστηριότητες των νέων σήμερα. ΤΗΛΕΟΡΑΣΗ ΧΡΗΣΗ ΥΠΟΛΟΓΙΣΤΗ ΣΥΝΤΡΟΦΙΑ ΜΕ ΦΙΛΟΥΣ ΑΘΛΗΤΙΣΜΟΣ ∆ΙΑΒΑΣΜΑ ΚΙΝ/ΦΟΣ-ΘΕΑΤΡΟ ΣΥΝΑΥΛΙΕΣ-ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ ΕΚΡΟΜΕΣ-ΤΑΞΙ∆ΙΑ ΦΩΤΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ-… ΞΕΚΟΥΡΑΣΗ ΑΛΛΕΣ ΑΣΧΟΛΙΕΣ 0%

70% 59% 50% 30% 18% 22% 10% 14% 7% 5% 22% 20%

40%

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Figure 4.3 KPG May 2010 test paper (B2 level)

of a list of illustrative can-do statements which reflect what is likely to be produced by candidates of different proficiency levels on the basis of specific mediation task types. As will be stressed herein, the results of the task analysis can function as a starting point for the development of illustrative descriptors based on both task and performance analyses, ultimately enabling syllabus designers and test developers to decide the types of written tasks through which mediation competence can be developed and measured at each level. The analysis only involved three proficiency levels as mediation is assessed from B1 onwards. The following text discusses the general requirements as regards the written mediation tasks at these specific levels. Specifically, the B1 level mediation activity requires candidates to compile bits of information from one or an assortment of Greek texts, such as a thematic page of a popular magazine, a travel leaflet, etc., and to produce one single text of about 80 words in English. The Greek text(s) are short and are likely to have factual information. The English text is most often of a

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different type and has a different communicative purpose than the target text. The amount of information that candidates must relay in English is rather limited. The B2 level mediation activity usually requires candidates to select information from a Greek text and to produce one text in English of about 100 words in order to achieve a communicative purpose. At this exam level, a greater variety of source texts are used than at the B1 level, and they are slightly more complex. What is more, whereas the B1 level mediation activity offers flexibility as to the amount of information to be relayed, the B2 level mediation activity requires the relaying of a greater amount of information from the source text. Finally, the C1 level written mediation activity requires more careful reading of the Greek text, which usually includes complex and sophisticated vocabulary so that candidates can relay specific information from the source into a target text in English in about 180 words. At this particular level, the mediation task obliges candidates to stick more closely to the source text and relay specific pieces of information rather than to select those items they can write about in the target language. Length also differentiates the B and C1 level source texts employed for the mediation activities.

Rationale for task description and analysis With the advent of performance-based assessments, the role of tasks in relation to performance has recently attracted considerable attention, and much research has addressed the impact of task characteristics on the linguistic product, as Wigglesworth (2001) observes. Although researchers may consider task characteristics differently and classify them in a variety of ways,1 the results of relevant research 2 suggest that the output seems to be dependent on the task that triggers it or, as Reichelt (2001) puts it, different task types seem to lead language users to produce texts with very different characteristics.3 This is the main reason why my research, aimed at discovering what counts as successful mediation, set out to describe and analyse the tasks which triggered the particular performance. On this interrelationship between tasks and production, Bachman and Palmer (1996: 45) argue that task characteristics inevitably influence test scores to some degree and for that reason it is essential to understand the effect of such influence. In his effort to provide the rationale for his framework of task description, Bachman (1990), who defines test characteristics as test methods, points out that ‘the framework of method facets should not be regarded as a definitive statement or exhaustive list, but rather as a guide for empirical research’, which may lead to a better understanding of the extent to which these facets affect performance on language tests. In a

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later publication, Bachman (2002: 471) also contends that understanding the effects of tasks on language performance and how test-takers interact with tasks is ‘the most pressing issue facing language performance assessment’. Hughes (2009: 46) agrees that texts are shaped by the social and cultural contexts in which they are produced. A number of variables determine the language to be used and, according to Hughes (2009), these may be the purpose of the text, the text type, the subject matter/topic, the role or perspective taken by the text producer, the producer’s relationship with the intended audience, the text’s intended impact on the audience, the mode of communication and the medium through which the communication is undertaken. The extent to which the linguistic characteristics of tasks, which differ in terms of purpose, audience interaction and structure but coincide in terms of the required text type (i.e. an email), affect written production has been investigated by Li (2000). The findings of her study indicate that there were syntactic, lexical and grammatical differences in English as a second language (ESL) students’ writing in email tasks that had different purposes, which involved - or did not involve - audience interaction, and between structured and non-structured email tasks. In addition, Bae and Bachman (2010) have conducted research with a view to discovering the degree of influence of two types of tasks (i.e. letter and story writing) on the content, grammar, spelling and length of the texts produced by elementary students, the results of which indicate that writing performance is differentiated by the two tasks. A major focus of relevant research has been on the differential cognitive load that language learners manage when performing different types of tasks and the extent to which these varying characteristics impact on their production. The research that is discussed below focuses on the impact of tasks on performance from a cognitive perspective. Tasks, in other words, have been described on the basis of their cognitive demands. Tavakoli (2009) and Robinson (1995, 2001) have investigated the effects of tasks on learner performance. In fact, Tavakoli (2009), who has considered the effects of the structure and storyline of oral narrative tasks on second language task performance in an assessment context, has found that the cognitive demands of the task have an impact not only on task performance but also on learner perceptions of task difficulty. Robinson’s (1995, 2001) two studies have also shown that the cognitive complexity of pedagogic tasks does exert an influence on learner production. Note that task complexity refers to the intrinsic cognitive demands of the task, as Robinson (2003: 55) points out.

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Similarly, a series of studies by Foster and Skehan (1996; Skehan & Foster, 1997) have demonstrated that different task features (e.g. dialogic vs monologic, structured vs unstructured, simple vs complex in outcome) have a different impact on fluency, complexity and accuracy in the linguistic output produced by learners (Skehan, 2001). Note that ‘complexity’ was measured ‘as the amount of subordination per communication unit’ (Skehan, 2001: 191); ‘fluency’ was measured in terms of the amount of pauses, total silence, repetition, reformulations and replacements; while ‘accuracy’ was measured by the proportion of error-free clauses. It is worth mentioning that Skehan (1996, 1998: 88) ultimately proposes three sets of features that seem to affect performance on tasks, namely (a) code complexity, i.e. the language required to accomplish the task; (b) cognitive complexity, i.e. the thinking required to accomplish it; and (c) communicative stress, i.e. the performance conditions for accomplishing a task. Skehan (1996) also proposes a framework for task analysis linked to information-processing perspectives. He proposes that tasks can be distinguished on the basis of their language, cognitive demands and the communicative pressure they may entail (see Skehan & Foster, 1997). The task dimensions, according to Skehan (1998: 174), are abstractness of information or task, type of task information, nature of operation required on task information and familiarity of task information. Based on Skehan’s (1996, 1998) framework for describing tasks in the testing context, Iwashita et al. (2001) have attempted to understand the relationship between task characteristics, such as type, format, complexity and task performance, by focusing on accuracy, fluency and complexity. They have found that task complexity has an effect on accuracy. The pattern that seems to emerge from Kuiken and Vedder’s (2008) study is that an increase in task complexity leads learners to produce texts which are correct but not necessarily more syntactically complex or lexically varied. Koda (1993) also explored ways in which different writing tasks (i.e. a narrative and a descriptive task) affect the quality (in terms of comprehensibility, organisation, cohesion, grammaticality, sentence structure, vocabulary content strength and interest value) and the quantity of the linguistic output. The three analyses conducted (i.e. linguistic feature, topical structure and composition quality) to identify qualitative and quantitative differences between the writing tasks consistently demonstrated that the tasks posed varying linguistic and rhetorical requirements (Koda, 1993: 342–343). Overall, her findings indicated that a descriptive task places fewer linguistic and cognitive demands on the language user than a narrative task.

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Way et al. (2000) have gone a step further by investigating three different writing tasks (i.e. descriptive, narrative and expository) involving prompts or not, in order to assess the quality, fluency, syntactic complexity and accuracy of the writing samples produced by novice learners of French. Their results, which replicate Koda’s (1993) findings, have actually demonstrated that the learners’ performance was higher in the descriptive tasks than in the expository tasks. Additionally, the findings of this particular study have suggested that prompts also had a significant effect on learners’ performance. In addition to the above, Cumming (1989) has shown that argumentative tasks trigger more decisions involving simultaneous thinking about gist and language than do letter writing tasks. As regards frameworks for task description, Bachman (1990) and Bachman and Palmer (1996) have proposed a framework for describing test tasks which has been influential, especially in assessment studies. Commenting on this model, Carr (2006: 269) points out that ‘because of the detailed descriptions of tasks that it makes possible, the model also provides a useful research paradigm for empirical validation studies and other research’. The task characteristics proposed by Bachman (1990) fall into five major categories: the testing environment or setting, the test rubrics, the input the test-taker receives (both in terms of format and language input), the expected response to that input (i.e. in terms of channel, mode, format, nature of language and organisational and pragmatic characteristics) and finally the relationship between input and expected response (see also Bachman et al., 1988). The model used for the description of the KPG written mediation tasks for the purposes of this research is explained in the following section.

The Task Analysis Model (TAM) and its parameters Theoretical principles underlying the TAM Involving a top-down or deductive approach to data analysis, the description of the written mediation tasks across levels of proficiency has been based on a specific model resulting from the task analysis project that the Research Centre for Language Teaching, Testing and Assessment (RCeL) has been carrying out since 2007. Specifically, the aim of this project has been to design a model for the linguistic description of the texts used in the KPG exams to assess candidates’ comprehension and the texts to be produced by candidates in response to test tasks, so as to tabulate their lexico-grammatical, generically defined features, and hence create a kind of ‘linguistic syllabus’ for each exam level. The comparative study of test tasks, which actually concerns all KPG languages has ultimately led to the standardisation of the KPG examination system, and this was the

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reason why the project was initially set up. Given the complexity of the endeavour to describe tasks and texts in a unified manner across exams and languages, the design of the TAM went through a variety of stages before it was finalised (cf. Kondyli & Lykou, 2009). The process of trialling and checking whether the initially constructed categories of the TAM worked, thereby providing valuable feedback about the tasks, was ongoing for a few years, during which time researchers made use of the model and suggested ways to improve it. For the purposes of this research, the TAM has been adapted as explained below. The theoretical foundations of the TAM lie in systemic functional linguistics and Halliday’s view of language as ‘a social semiotic resource people use to accomplish their purposes by expressing meanings in context’ (cited in Ming, 2007: 74). According to this view, language is a result of choices available to the speaker/writer in order to express his/her meanings in a given situation and implies that language exists in context and therefore must be studied in context. Elsewhere, Halliday (1994/2000: 16) states that ‘language is a resource for making, an indefinitely expandable source of meaning potential’. The systemic functional approach to language developed by Halliday and adopted in the KPG exams relates ‘textual linguistic resources to the extra-textual context of use (thus the designation “social-semiotic” attached to the theory)’ (Kaplan & Grabe, 2002: 201). The model also echoes the genre-based approach,4 the approach that the KPG exams adopt in the testing of language, which emphasises the social nature of language, thereby incorporating both discourse and contextual aspects of language use (Hyland, 2003: 18) and ultimately raising systematic links between language and context. This approach to writing that the KPG system adopts determines not only how writing tasks are to be designed, but also what kind of output is expected and how output is to be assessed. As pointed out by Dendrinos and Mistikopoulou (in press), the genre-based approach as described above does not favour the most common type of output assessment, which penalises or credits correctness of syntax and formal grammar. Rather, it favours output assessment that credits correctness of rules of appropriacy, assessing a test-taker’s ability to communicate in writing appropriate to the context of situation. What is thus assessed is candidates’ awareness of what is (in)appropriate within a sociocultural context and surely calls for the development of cultural knowledge. In the TAM, genres are understood both as products (i.e. types of texts that candidates are expected to produce) and as processes (i.e. linguistic courses of action that candidates are expected to follow). Text types are viewed as socially situated products with relatively stable structural forms (e.g. particular beginnings, middles and ends) and as having well-established

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names which encode the functions, purposes and meanings of the various social occasions of a particular culture. For example, a news report, a letter, an interview, a promotional leaflet, a novel, an office memo or an editorial are some of the types of texts that candidates may be asked to produce (RCeL, KPG Exam Specifications, 2011). 5 The linguistic features of a text are shaped by its generic process. Knapp and Watkins (2005) refer to five basic generic processes, each of which demands different text organisation and the use of different lexico-grammar: • • • • •

Description: When texts describe, they order things into common sense or technical frameworks of meaning. Explanation: When texts explain, they sequence phenomena in temporal and/or causal relationships. Instruction: When texts instruct, they sequence actions or behaviours in a logical order. Argument: When texts argue, they expand a proposition in order to persuade the reader to accept a point of view. Narration: When texts narrate, they sequence events, actions and people in time and space.

In order to relate the type of text to the purpose for which it is produced, genre is regarded and investigated herein as a type of text which fulfils a specific generic process. As the type of text itself is not sufficient to determine the type of language to be used for different communicative goals, its consideration in combination with the generic process of the text provides an answer to what ultimately determines the language to be used. It is this combination that makes the lexico-grammatical choices found in a text meaningful. In other words, what ultimately determines the language to be used in a given text is not determined solely by the type of text called for by the task, but also by the generic process required by the task (e.g. the language of a letter which is written to present an argument will be different from a letter narrating an event). To be more specific, I will use Dendrinos and Mitsikopoulou’s (in press) words, who state that the view on which the KPG exams are based is that lexicogrammar becomes meaningful only when it is linked to the purpose and the function of texts. Different text types (genres) serve different social purposes and functions and, as a result, they draw on different lexicogrammatical resources. (Dendrinos & Mitsikopoulou, in press) Apart from the genre, the text’s context also plays a role in determining the linguistic choices that make up socially meaningful texts. ‘Context’

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is not a new term (cf. Lyons, 1977) and its significance in determining linguistic choices has been widely and variously discussed. Linguists dealing with systemic functional linguistics view language and context as being inextricably interrelated (cf. Drew & Heritage, 1992; Fetzer & Akman, 2002; Halliday, 2003; Hewings & Hewings, 2005; Iddings et al., 2005; Thomson, 2004), while Halliday (2003: 79) characteristically points out that linguistic choices are constrained by the context, and that the meaning of such choices is determined by the context as well. Hewings and Hewings (2005) present a useful categorisation of types or levels of context which seems to be useful in any attempt to describe the rationale behind the task analysis parameters for this study. They identify (a) the local linguistic context or textual context or co-text, (b) the wider linguistic context, (c) the local situational context and (d) the sociocultural context. The local linguistic context refers to the linguistic environment of an utterance, i.e. what has been said or written in a communication before and after a particular utterance. Perhaps the most obvious linguistic elements that require prior contextual information are deictics (i.e. words that ‘point to’ what they refer to, such as here, this, those), pronouns and certain abstract vocabulary. The wider linguistic context refers to the way in which a particular text relates to other texts, and the way in which our interpretation of a text is influenced by our prior experience of other texts.6 The local situational context refers to the immediate and observable features of the situation in which communication takes place. Among these features are: (a) the role relationships between interactants (i.e. who is speaking/writing to whom and what their relationship is), (b) the setting (i.e. where the communication occurs), (c) the purpose of communication (i.e. what the speaker or writer wishes to achieve through communication – to recommend, to inform, to advise, etc.) and (d) the channel of communication (i.e. through the written or oral mode). Last but not least, the wider sociocultural context is the ‘background against which communication is interpreted, and includes social and political aspects of language or national groups as a whole, and features of institutional domains’ (Hewings & Hewings, 2005: 20). Genres develop out of the various spheres of human activity (Chapman, 2006: 18) and are realised through registers which in turn determine the kind of language to be used. Originally based on the thesis that language varies with situation and therefore that a certain kind of language is appropriate to a certain use, register has been defined as the variety of language used in a particular situational context (Morley, 2000). Bartlett and Erling (2006: 96) also claim that the ‘linkage between form, function and context is captured in the term register’. Registers vary along three parameters, namely, the ‘content’ of what is to be said, the role relationships

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between the writer and the reader (i.e. who the participants are and what their relationship is) and the mode (i.e. the channel of communication, whether written or oral). For instance, writing about travelling is different from writing about economics; in the same sense, writing to a friend is different from writing to a professor, or complaining orally is different from complaining through a letter because different structuring of the information is required in each case. According to Halliday (1978), three concepts define register, concepts that actually form the basis of our framework of analysis: field, tenor and mode (see also Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Martin, 1992). ‘Field’ is the type of social action or what the text is about (its topic). ‘Tenor’ is related to the role relationships of participants that influence the degree of formality and politeness, while ‘mode’ refers to ‘the symbolic organisation of the discourse’ (Hyland, 2002b: 15), that is whether it is spoken or written. Overall, the genre-based approach adopted in the KPG exams implies that using a genre is more than simply producing a specific text type; it also involves ‘assuming a certain stance toward other people and towards the world’ (Dyson, 1992: 5). Users of the target language become social actors who use writing in order to ‘engage in social dialogues with other people, using certain genres to enact certain relationships’ (Dyson, 1992: 4). Similarly, Kress (1994: 125) makes it clear that although genre conventions are arbitrary when considered in isolation, they are not arbitrary within the context of any specific society. His argument also underscores the systematic links between genres and the context in which they are produced. In much the same vein, Eggins (2004: 9) argues that the concept of genre is used to ‘describe the impact of the context of culture on language, by exploring the staged, step-by-step structure cultures institututionalise as ways of achieving goals’. As becomes evident, in any communicative event, participants have to abide by certain rules, and it is well established that knowing what rules apply to a particular situation requires considerable pragmatic and strategic competence on the part of language users (Bono & Melo-Pfeifer, 2011: 291). In line with this view, the genre-based approach adopted in the KPG exams aims at assessing whether candidates are in a position to reproduce in their text the main conventions of a specific genre and to use different genres effectively for different purposes and in different social contexts; in other words, to select appropriate content, organisation, grammar and lexis depending on the situation in which they are writing, since language is always used in specific communicative situations in order to achieve a specific communicative purpose (Dendinos & Mitsikopoulou, in press).

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Parameters of analysis Each KPG written mediation task has been analysed on the basis of certain task features (i.e. the six parameters of analysis), which are further explained in this section. Genre is regarded as the text type (e.g. an email, an article, a letter) together with the generic process performed (i.e. to instruct, to describe, to explain, to argue or to narrate). The combination of these two variables emphasises the inextricable link between the purpose for which a given text is produced and the lexico-grammar through which it is realised. The parameter of topic refers to (a) the subject matter of the text, (b) what the text is about or (c) the general content area that test-takers are asked to write about. Following Martin (1992), topic (or field) is concerned with systems of activity, including descriptions of the participants (i.e. who), the process (i.e. what they are doing) and the circumstances that these activities involve (i.e. when, where, why, how). Discourse environment refers to the linguistic environment that the text may appear in and it heavily influences the language to be used. To illustrate this with an example, the language of an article in a newspaper is different from the language of an article in a magazine. In this case, newspapers and magazines constitute different discourse environments, each of which affects the type of language that is to be used. The meaning that ‘discourse’ takes herein emphasises the importance of looking at language in context and usually involves an analysis of actual stretches of spoken and written language, often referred to as ‘texts’.7 Another parameter is the communicative purpose (i.e. what the writer wishes to do with the language or else why he/she is communicating the message – to urge, to advise, to disagree or to argue). The final parameter refers to the roles of the interlocutors participating in the communicative event (i.e. addressor or addressee). Addressor and addressee refer to the interlocutors participating in the communicative event. It is actually the combination of the aforementioned two categories (i.e. communicative purpose and roles) that gives information about the social relationship between interlocutors at the time that these relationships ‘are enacted through the dimensions of power and solidarity’ (Martin, 2002: 56). Note that genre theorists locate communicative roles or participant relationships at the heart of language use and assume that every successful text will display the writer’s awareness of both the text’s context and the readers who form part of that context (Hyland, 2002a: 114). Similarly, as clearly stated by Coulthard (1994: 5), given that all texts are designed for a specific audience, once they exist, the texts define that audience. The aforementioned parameters have an impact on the lexicogrammar, which is the realisation in word form of the various patterns of semantic structure. In other words, lexico-grammar refers to the types of

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linguistic choices that are used and how these are structured and organised in order to conform to the characteristics of a particular genre in relation to purpose, audience and content. ‘Lexis’ refers to the vocabulary used to fulfil specific functions and to respond to different topics and audiences. Grammar, in contrast, refers to the rules of a given language – including morphology and syntax – which describe its formal properties and which underlie the use of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. Morphology and syntax fall under grammar. Although each of the aforementioned parameters is discrete and distinct in its own right, they all contribute to the overall meaning of a given text, interacting with and affecting one another in critical ways. It is difficult, if not impossible, to single out any one of these characteristics as being in itself critical in affecting test performance, a fact that is supported by the lack of research addressing one single task parameter (Weigle, 2002: 64). The selection, thus, of the categories on which the analysis of the tasks was based does not constitute an arbitrary decision and the theory of language underlying the KPG exams is reflected in the design of the model. Below is an example of a KPG (B2 level written) mediation task, which is described in terms of the aforementioned parameters.

Example Using information from the following article, write a text of advice (150 words) to be published in your school paper. Tell your peers what they should and should not do if they do not want to be addicted to the internet!

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Task analysis: An example Task To produce a text to advise readers on what they should do to avoid becoming addicted to the internet.

Topic: Internet addiction

(B2 level exam Nov 2009)

Source text (in Greek)

Target text (in English)

Text type

Text in a magazine

Text type

Generic process Discourse environment Addressor

Describe

Generic process Discourse environment Addressor

Advice column text in a school paper Instruct and explain Column of a school paper Pupils

Addressee

Pupils

Communicative purpose (as stated in the instructions)

Give advice

Addressee

Magazine Writer of the magazine text Reader of the magazine

Task analysis procedure: Phases For the purposes of the task analysis project, a specially designed electronic database8 was constructed, which facilitated the statistical processing of data and enabled comparisons among tasks with different linguistic characteristics. This database, which included the KPG tasks stored for each exam period and proficiency level,9 was exploited for the purposes of the written mediation task analysis research, helping me to draw conclusions in relation to not only each feature separately but also combinations of features. Comparing data across tasks and tests has been one of the major advantages of the task analysis database, which also offered a means of entering new data, of changing the wording of the parameters (text type is an example of a parameter) or values (a letter or an article is considered a value related to the text type parameter), of omitting, merging or altering values or inserting new parameters. The database included as many parameters as were defined by the model of analysis with a number of values that were neither finite nor predetermined. While the process of describing tasks proceeded, new values which better described the particular sample were added by me. In addition, for the purposes of this research,

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the new parameter inserted is related to the mediatory requirements of the written mediation tasks (i.e. whether the tasks call for a summarisation of the source text information, selectively using – or picking up – information found in different parts of the text or transferring numerical information into verbal information). Data entering was conducted in two phases, a preliminary phase which involved the entering of metadata related to a limited sample of mediation tasks with a view to testing out the functionality of the tool, and a basic phase which concerned the entering of metadata with regard to the total number of tasks under investigation. After the data had been entered in the preliminary stage, the need arose for a slight modification of the way that the data were presented to the user interested in observing statistical differences across tasks of various examination periods. At that point, the search system of the database was modified in order to enable quests for records on the basis of specific examination periods. In both phases, entering data involved assigning values to tasks on the basis of the parameters. For instance, under the entry ‘text type’, a value was inserted (i.e. email, brochure, letter, etc.). After the preliminary data entry, new values were added and the statistical analysis of the data followed.

Task requirements across proficiency levels: Main results10 KPG mediation tasks ask language users to produce texts in English selecting information from a source text in Greek. As the research results depict, the higher the level of proficiency that the tasks are meant to test, the greater the demands are, in terms of linguistic, pragmatic and generic competence. The systematic analysis and description of written mediation tasks in terms of their linguistic features has shown that the degree of candidates’ familiarity with the topics and how abstract these are, seem to distinguish mediation tasks across levels. The higher the proficiency level, the higher the degree of abstractness, thereby requiring the use of more complex, sophisticated vocabulary in the target text. As shown in Figure 4.4, while at the B1 level, KPG candidates are required to handle personal and routine daily life topics, at the C1 level, topics involving more specialised, non-routine issues (e.g. literature and medical issues) designed to be relevant to older candidates make their appearance. These findings have led us to conclude that the topic areas in mediation tasks should be sufficiently close to the needs and interests of candidates at a given performance level so that they have sufficient existing schemata to enable them to respond to the requirements of the task.

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In addition, the analysis has indicated that the higher the proficiency level, the greater the text type variability (see Table 4.1). Candidates at lower levels are likely to produce a limited range of text types when mediating, while C1 level candidates are expected to be able to produce a wide variety of text types. While B1 level mediation tasks, for instance, always require the production of email messages, emails do not appear at all in C1 level mediation tasks. Generally, the possibility of having to deal with a wide range of text types (i.e. letters, articles, etc.), apart from emails, appears from the B2 level upwards. The generic process of the target texts is not actually a differentiating feature across tasks. Although different types of combinations between text types and generic processes are found to occur across levels, no single pattern emerges. As regards the source texts that the KPG candidates are provided with, the most frequently occurring text type at the B1 level - and to a lesser extent at the B2 level – is a text from a magazine or a newspaper, while at the C1 level, KPG item writers seem to favour the use of website texts, at least in the corpus of tasks analysed. Certain types of texts are not used as source texts at the C1 level, such as tourist guide texts, texts in a magazine or newspaper columns and film presentations. As the data show, discourse environment variability is also what differentiates tasks (see Table 4.2). As a matter of fact, those texts which require the use of complex and sophisticated language should appear in mediation tasks at higher proficiency levels. In other words, at the B1 level, candidates are always asked to produce language while communicating on a personal level, while for C1 KPG candidates, the newspaper as a discourse environment appears more frequently.

B1

C1

1 0

ris

di

to u n/ tio ca

ph

va

B2

2

as t m rolo / et tra gy ys /e v ica at elli in l& g ng ha ps bi sle yc ts ep ho c in log ust o g ha ical ms bi he t ex s/p alth ro er b cis e & lem s fit ne ss bo ok i s vo nte lu rn nt et ee ed rin uc g at io w n or fre et k/ pr i of me es sio an ns im a in st ls itu te se ci s a & ne m m be a ed ac ica he li s ss u sm es en ok vi ro ing n w SO men rit S t vi er s & lla ge s lit er at ur e

number of instances

Topics across levels 3

Figure 4.4 Topics across levels

% 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Target text type

Email Announcement Report Article Postcard Letter Website presentation Book presentation Film presentation Text for an informative/promotional leaflet Text for a university prospectus Text in a magazine column Written text to be presented orally

B1 21.43 7.14 14.29 7.14 7.14 0.00 7.14 14.29 7.14 7.14 0.00 7.14 0.00

%

B2 0 9.09 18.18 0.00 0.00 27.27 0.00 9.09 0.00 18.18 9.09 0.00 9.09

%

C1

Table 4.1 Target and source text types across proficiency levels

Text in a magazine/newspaper Tourist guide text Text in a magazine/newspaper column Text in an informative leaflet Book presentation Article Article and figure/table Figure/graph Website text Event programme Resume Resume and invitation Film presentation Not specified

Source text type

57.1 14.3 14.3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14.3

%

B1

28.6 7.1 7.1 7.1 14.3 0 7.1 7.1 7.1 7.1 0 0 7.1 0

%

B2

9.1 0 0 9.1 9.1 18.9 9.1 0 27.3 0 9.1 9.1 0 0

%

C1

80 Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing

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Table 4.2 Source and target discourse environments across proficiency levels Target text

Source text

Discourse environment

B1%

B2%

C1%

B1%

B2%

C1%

Magazine Newspaper/magazine Newspaper Webpage Publishing company book catalogue Book Tourist guide Not specified Informative/ promotional leaflet Personal domain Workplace School newspaper University prospectus Radio

0

28.57

9.09

0 0 0

7.14 7.14 7.14

27.27 0.00 9.09

71.43 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

28.57 21.43 14.29 7.14 14.29

0.00 45.45 9.09 27.27 0.00

0.00 14.29 14.29 0.00

0.00 7.14 0.00 7.14

9.09 0.00 0.00 9.09

0

14.29

18.18

100 0 0 0 0

28.57 0.00 7.14 0.00 0.00

0 18.18 0.00 9.09 9.09

Moreover, the communicative purpose is much different at higher levels. C1 level candidates are expected to use highly complex language in order to achieve communicative goals which demand the use of sophisticated and abstract language (e.g. to argue, to express doubt or to evaluate) (Figure 4.5). In contrast, B1 level KPG candidates are only asked to produce texts which advise, announce, express their opinion, explain, inform, warn and suggest, while B2 level candidates are usually asked to perform a greater variety of communicative acts, such as advising, giving their opinion, informing, suggesting, arguing, urging, presenting, recommending, inviting or promoting. What also differentiates KPG mediation activities across levels and is relevant to the communicative purpose is the difference (if any) between the communicative purpose of the source text and the target text. In other words, at the B1 level, the source and target texts always have different communicative purposes (e.g. the source text may give advice, while the target text may inform), at the B2 level, they have similar purposes (to present and inform), while at the C1 level, the purposes of the source and target texts often coincide (e.g. both the source and the target text may inform).

82

Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing Communicative purpose across levels 6 B1

B2

C1

4 2 0

n ce ce on rm ai vi ni un fo pl ad pi in ex no o e n v a ve gi gi

ar

w

n

t

es

gg

su

e

gu

ar

ge ur

t d en en es m pr m o c re

in

vi

te

t

e

ot

ub

om

pr

p ex

r

s es

do

e

te

ua

al

ev

nc

rie

e xp ee

t

la re

Figure 4.5 Communicative purposes across levels

Finally, the relationship between the interlocutors – i.e. addressor and addressee – is also what makes a task more or less demanding. The findings suggest that B1 level candidates are likely to address only personal audiences (their family or their friends), which requires the use of simple language.

Mediation-specific can-do statements based on task analysis Generally, task description of KPG mediation tasks has led us to understand what differentiates mediation tasks across levels in terms of their linguistic characteristics and, ultimately, what mediators at different levels are likely to do with the language. The resulting illustrative descriptors listed below define the expected language performance by KPG candidates at each of the three proficiency levels examined. The B1 level candidate is expected both to be familiar with some basic generic conventions and to use simple language and text organisation. The style of the target text that he/she is likely to be able to produce should be informal and personal. Specifically, he/she is likely to • • • • •

relay information about topics of everyday life; produce texts of a familiar text type involving a limited number of generic processes which require the use of simple and basic language; produce personal texts; perform some basic communicative acts which entail the selection of simple lexico-grammatical structures; address only friends or family (people familiar to each other).

Overall, the B2 level learner or candidate should know what structural features differentiate a variety of genres and be able to use simple language. Additionally, he/she is expected to be able to produce both semi-formal and informal texts with either a personal or less personal tone. The B2 level learner or candidate is actually likely to:

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• • • • •

83

relay information about topics of general interest related to his/her everyday life; produce texts of various types which may fulfil multiple generic processes requiring the use of rather simple language; produce texts which will appear in different discourse environments; perform a greater variety of communicative acts, all of which demand a higher level of language competence; address different audiences (e.g. apart from addressing a friend, he/she may address readers of a webpage).

The C1 level language user is expected to be able both to use complex language in a wide variety of discourse environments and to produce texts whose style is mainly formal and impersonal. Specifically, he/she is likely to: • • • • •

relay information about more specialised, sophisticated and abstract topics; produce texts of a wide range of types which involve his/her fulfilling generic processes requiring the use of complex lexico-syntactical structures; produce texts which will appear in different discourse environments; perform a wide range of communicative acts (e.g. argue) which require the use of complex language; address a wide range of audiences.

Basic considerations for the design of mediation tasks In order for foreign language teachers to be able to produce their own mediation tasks for their classes, they have to consider the following (apart from the aforementioned illustrative descriptors): • • • • • • •

Is it a task for teaching or testing purposes? Will it be oral or written mediation? What will the linguistic and mediatory requirements of the tasks be? Which proficiency level is the task designed for? What is its aim? What skills and strategies will it develop or assess? What parameters will be involved, i.e. the topic, text type, discourse environment and length of the source text? Will the mediation be at the level of reception or production?

As regards the final point raised above and not discussed before, the first two examples below are provided to show the distinction between

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mediation tasks at the level of reception and those at the level of production. The task in Example 1, from an A level exam, includes questions in Greek, which candidates answer by circling the correct option once they have read the English text. Obviously, they are not asked here to produce anything in the target language, but rather only to comprehend it; these sorts of activity are appropriate for learners at low-proficiency levels. While Example 2 asks candidates to read a Greek text and extract information from it in order to write another text in English, in Example 3, candidates have to use information from the Greek text but provide an oral rather than written response. Example 2 aims at developing learners’ mediation skills in writing, while Example 3 is aimed at their mediation skills in speaking. Example 1 (taken from May 2012, KPG A level)

Example 2 Imagine that you are a journalist for a local newspaper and you are asked to write an article to suggest ways of preventing fires. The following article, which is extracted from the Protect the Environment magazine, gives some tips about how people can protect themselves from fires.

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Example 3: Oral mediation task (adapted from May 2007, KPG B1 level) Your French friend is going to take his dog to the beach for the first time. Read the Greek text and tell him what he should do so that his dog will be safe.

As regards source texts, they should come from a wide variety of sources and discourse environments (articles, letters and emails, informative texts from different types of leaflets, instruction manual texts, maps with

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commentaries, song lyrics, book announcements, webpage texts, etc.) and topics should be close to students’ interests and needs. By knowing which type of mediation tasks are likely to help learners develop which mediation strategies, teachers can help their students practice accordingly, and at the same time, also raise their awareness of the fact that different types of tasks require the use of different strategies. Finally, in relation to the topic areas that language users at different proficiency levels will deal with, these should be sufficiently close to their needs and interests so that candidates at a given performance level have sufficient existing schemata to enable them to respond to the requirements of the task. Special care must be taken not to include any topic or issue articulated in ways that would be offensive to the people taking the exam (usually people living, working or/and studying in Greece), inappropriate for youngsters and having no educative value.

Conclusions The present chapter has been an attempt to explain what a mediation task entails and what differentiates such tasks across proficiency levels based on the results of a specific study which focused on KPG written mediation. Predicting which features of the written mediation tasks prompt which types of mediation performance and arriving at conclusions regarding the textual features which are likely to be produced by candidates of different proficiency levels (see previous section with the illustrative can-do statements) constitutes a first step towards the development of mediation performance descriptors for both testing and teaching purposes as will be discussed later in this book. In the long run, apart from the positive effects that the task analysis results may have on the design of the test, they may assist washback from the test to teaching and test preparation and reverse washback of teaching into a test–craft process (see also Lynch & Davidson, 1994). Shohamy’s words (2006a) are characteristic when, in considering language tests as the main mechanisms for manipulating languages, she informs us that tests have a strong impact on education. Such descriptors may actually function as a blueprint for the teacher who wishes to prepare his/her students for the KPG exams and constitute a basis for the design of material aiming at the development of learners’ mediation skills. With such information available, the teacher is also empowered to design his/her own materials aiming at the development of competencies and skills that mediation tasks are designed to measure.

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Notes (1)

(2) (3)

(4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

(10)

Iwashita et al. (2001) refer to three approaches to the characterisation of tasks, namely, interactional approaches (Pica, 1994), information-processing approaches (cf. Robinson, 1995; Skehan, 1996, 1998) and test method approaches (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). See Wigglesworth (2008) for a review of research. Apart from the internal characteristics of the tasks that seem to influence task performance, other variables external to the task (e.g. provision of planning time or not) have been shown to affect learner production (see, for instance, Ellis, 2005). However, these factors related to the task conditions are not discussed herein as they are not within the scope of the research. For information about what genre-based approaches to teaching and assessment involve, see Cope and Kalantzis (1993), Hyland (2004, 2007) and Knapp and Watkins (2005). For the KPG specifications, see http://rcel.enl.uoa.gr/kpg/. The term ‘intertextuality’ is often used to refer to the kind of knowledge that we bring to a text from our experience of other similar texts. This is in line with Mercer (1995: 79), who sees discourse as language in its social context. Discourse, according to Mercer (1995), is used to carry out the social and intellectual life of a community. Microsoft Office Access Database 2007. The database also contains information about the type of task (i.e. multiple choice, gap filling, free writing, etc.) and what each task measures (i.e. comprehension or production) along with information about the texts related to a given task (i.e. texts for comprehension and texts to be produced). For all test papers, each text has been described in terms of specific features (i.e. topic, discourse environment, text type, text-process, etc.). Task analysis for the purposes of this research instigated the production of papers which have already been published (see Stathopoulou, 2012a, 2013c, 2014c).

5 Mediation Strategies Introduction As already mentioned in previous chapters, in order to mediate successfully, the language user is required to use different strategies, or techniques which will enable him/her to mediate successfully. Shifting attention from mediation tasks to mediation outcomes, this chapter defines mediation strategies derived from research, giving specific examples of their realisation1 and briefly discussing the inductive and multifaceted process of developing a ‘coding scheme’ – the term adapted from corpus linguistics to refer to the framework or model of analysis for identifying strategies detected in the corpora of texts resulting from mediation tasks. It is worth mentioning right from the beginning that Lewins’ (1992: 21, cited in O’Donoghue, 2007: 55) definition of ‘model’ has been adopted in this work. A model, according to him, is a simplified representation of something existing in the world. The function of a model is to provide a clearer picture of something which is more complicated in reality. The scheme (or the so-called Inventory of Mediation Strategies; IMS) was constructed after a lengthy and strenuous procedure and is the outcome of an investigation which involved multiple stages. As explained in this chapter, the coding scheme arose inductively and directly from the careful reading 2 and analysis of raw data (scripts as a result of mediation) with a view to finding out the recurring patterns or dominant and significant themes inherent in the raw data (Thomas, 2006: 239), and not from a priori expectations or models (the so-called deductive approaches to data analysis3). The model was not ‘inferred logically’ as Diesing (1972, as cited in Davis, 1995) would put it, but was empirically derived on the basis of data. In other words, the model, which gives information about what successful mediation entails, was shaped from the data rather than from a preconceived, logically deduced theoretical framework (Charmaz, 2006: 5; Eaves, 2001: 655). This means that analytical processes prompted discovery and theory development rather than verification of a pre-existing theory (Eaves, 2001: 655). The chapter is divided into two main parts, with the first part describing the model and defining its components and the second part discussing 88

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the methodological procedure and the theoretical principles echoing my methodological decisions.

The Term ‘Strategy’: Definitions and Theoretical Considerations What is a mediation strategy? Mediation strategies are techniques or choices on the part of the mediator in order to perform as well as possible in tasks that require relaying information from one text/language to another or in situations where interlocutors do not share the same information/language. Following Inghilleri (2009: 282), who maintains that the term ‘strategy’ connotes a teleological course of action undertaken by the language user to achieve a particular goal in an optimal way, mediation strategies are regarded as actions taken by the mediator in order to accomplish his/ her task (i.e. to relay information from one text to another), and they generally concern • • • •

how source content is handled and ultimately incorporated into the target text; how extra-textual content (i.e. content not included in the source text) has been incorporated at the textual or sentential level; by what means extracted and extra-textual information has been mixed up; how relayed information has been organised and structured in the target text.

Successful mediation strategies are those which lead to effective mediation performance (from a mediatory point of view rather than from a linguistic point of view). What matters, in other words, is not the language used (how accurate it is) but how the mediators use the target language to transfer information from a text in a source language. The term ‘mediation strategy’ refers to this ‘how’ aspect of the mediation process. The term ‘mediation strategy’ first appeared in the field of foreign language didactics when mediation was included in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning, Assessment (CEFR) in 2001 (Council of Europe, 2001: 87). As stated therein, mediation strategies ‘reflect ways of coping with the demands of using finite resources to process information and establish equivalent meaning’. Developing background knowledge, locating supports, preparing a glossary, previewing,

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noting equivalences, bridging gaps and checking the congruence of two versions or refining it by consulting dictionaries are some of the strategies mentioned in the CEFR. Nevertheless, in this book, my understanding of mediation strategies is not consistent with the way that mediation strategies are described by the CEFR. As a matter of fact, mediation strategies are not regarded as techniques used in order to learn how to mediate effectively, to establish the same meanings between texts of different languages or to prepare for mediation. Rather, they are seen as those techniques used by the mediator to perform successfully when moving from one language to another.

Strategies in the field of foreign language education As far as the term ‘strategy’ is concerned, it is not new in the field of foreign language education. In fact, in second (L2) or foreign language learning studies, a review of the literature reveals a bewildering array of different terms instead of strategy. The term, as noted in Psaltou-Joycey (2010: 40), derives from Ancient Greek and was initially used to refer to ‘that branch of warlike conflict that had to do with the study and planning of military operations for the achievement of a goal, i.e., victory in war’. ‘Technique’ (Stern, 1983), ‘approach or deliberate action’ (Chamot, 1987), ‘device’ (Rubin, 1975), ‘tactic’ (Seliger, 1984), ‘move’ (Sarig, 1987), ‘procedure’ (Schmeck, 1988) or ‘learning behaviour’ or ‘thought’ (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990) are some of those terms. The multitude of terms echoes a multitude of definitions (cf. Chamot, 1987; Cohen, 1998a; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990, 1994; Oxford, 1989, 1990, 1992/1993; Rubin, 1975; Weistein & Mayer, 1986), a problem also mentioned by Macaro (2006: 324) and, as a consequence, a wide range of methodological approaches towards strategy investigation have been employed. El Aouri (2013) very aptly describes the problem of defining strategies. He characteristically mentions: ‘This ambiguous nature, lack of clarity and the broad definition of what a strategy really is makes of strategies a “fuzzy” concept. In fact, strategies are most of the time defined so broadly that it is difficult to classify them as observable, non-observable, specific or universal behaviors’ (El Aouri, 2013: 50). Generally, the term ‘strategy’ suggests an effort made to achieve a goal and refers to the conscious moves made by L2 users, which they intend to be useful for either learning or using their L2 (Cohen, 1996, 1998a, 1998b). Strategies are generally divided into language learning and language use and are mainly regarded as conscious steps towards the accomplishment of a goal related to the learning or use of the target language or as tools used by learners to help them develop L2 competence. Oxford (1990: 8)

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defines learning strategies as ‘specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations’. Weinstein and Mayer (1986, cited in O’Malley & Chamot, 1990: 43) suggest that learning strategies ‘affect the learner’s motivational or affective state, or the way in which the learner selects, acquires, organizes, or integrates new knowledge’. As research has shown, strategies can be an effective method for speeding up the L2/foreign language learning process (Bölükbaş, 2013; Chamot et al., 1996; Dadour & Robbins, 1996; Jurkoviĉ, 2012; Leaver & Oxford, 1996; Oxford, 1996). Not only can they assist learners in promoting their own achievement in language proficiency (Bremner, 1998; Green & Oxford, 1995; Hong-Nam & Leavell, 2006; Olivares-Cuhat, 2002; O’Malley et al., 1985; Oxford, 1990; Politzer, 1983) but they can also foster learners’ autonomy (Holec, 1981) and self-regulation in language learning (Hsiao & Oxford, 2002). Learning strategies have been classified into ‘cognitive’, ‘metacognitive’, ‘affective’ ‘social’, ‘memory’ and ‘compensation’ strategies (Cohen, 1998a; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1990; Wenden & Rubin, 1987). ‘Cognitive strategies operate directly on incoming information, manipulating it in ways that enhance learning’ (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990: 44) and usually involve identifying, retaining, storing and retrieving words or phrases. Metacognitive strategies are used by learners to regulate their own learning or else ‘to control their own cognition’ (Cohen, 2000: 13) and are concerned with the planning, monitoring, organisation and evaluation of the language produced. Affective strategies are associated with the regulation of emotions, motivations and attitudes, whereas social strategies include those actions taken by learners in order to interact with other interlocutors, such as asking questions to clarify social roles or cooperating with others for the achievement of a task. Memory-related strategies are used for the storage of information, helping learners to link one language item or concept with another. Finally, compensatory strategies help the learner make up for missing knowledge, for example, by guessing the meaning from the context in listening and reading tasks, using synonyms and by using gestures or pause words. While language learning strategies are used with a goal of facilitating learning as already mentioned, language use strategies are considered as those mental operations or processes that users of a target language select when accomplishing language tasks (Cohen, 1998b). Writing, reading, speaking and listening strategies constitute types of language use strategies, although different studies regard them either from a cognitive perspective as problem-oriented techniques, or as actions to accomplish a task (cf. Petric

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& Czarl, 2003; Stathopoulou & Nikaki, 2009a, 2009b; Wong, 2005, among others). In the field of foreign language testing, research has been conducted in order to identify the strategies that test-takers use when taking a test (‘test-taking strategies’). Language use strategies are also considered testtaking strategies when they are applied to tasks in language tests (Cohen, 1998b). In fact, Cohen (1998a, 1998b) describes test-taking strategies as consisting of both language use strategies and test-wiseness strategies.4 He mentions that since the late 1970s, as is also the case with learning strategies, researchers have started to show an interest in testing from the point of view of the strategies employed by test-takers (cf. Abraham & Vann, 1996; Brunch, 1981; Cohen, 1984, 1998b; Nevo, 1989; Stathopoulou, 2014a) but such research is yet at an embryonic level (Cohen, 1998a, 1998b). However, some researchers have examined issues such as effective and non-effective test-taking strategies (cf. Cohen et al., 1998) as well as connections between strategies and test performance (cf. Anderson, 1991; Bachman et al., 1993; Purpura, 1997, 1998). The major difference between the way that mediation strategies are viewed herein and the way that they are handled in studies in the context of foreign language learning and testing lies in their task specificity. Obviously, they cannot be considered as learning strategies because they are not associated with the learning process and they cannot be viewed as language use strategies because they are not seen as mental operations related to the type of activity (i.e. writing or listening). Generally, this research is not interested in the cognitive processes involved or what the mediator’s thoughts are while transferring information from one language to the other and, therefore, are not examined as such. Such goals would actually entail focusing on the subject who is involved in the communicative encounter, that is, the mediator (and his/her thoughts while mediating), rather than focusing on the final outcome (i.e. the text produced in response to a task) which is central to this research. Cognitively oriented studies usually focus on learners’ ongoing ‘thinking episodes’ (Cumming, 2001: 5) or decision-making while writing, with a view to discovering certain writing behaviours or processes, such as planning, monitoring or evaluating (cf. Bosher, 1998; Fidalgo et al., 2008; GascoigneLally, 2000; Khaldieh, 2000; Manchón et al., 2000; Uzawa, 1996; Van Wijk & Sanders, 1999). Such studies in the area of applied linguistics (language learning and teaching or translation studies) elicit data via introspective methods of analysis, such as questionnaires or interviews (cf. Purpura, 1997) or think-aloud protocols (cf. Ackerman, 1991; Bernardini, 1999; Davis & Bistodeau, 1993; Göpferich & Jääskeläinen, 2009; Kussmaul &

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Tirkkonen-Condit, 1995; Lörscher, 1992), aiming to discover what goes on inside the head of the writer. The research presented in this book elicits data from texts as a result of mediation, as explained later in the chapter.

The Inventory of Mediation Strategies (IMS) As already mentioned in Chapter 1, the initial aim of the research presented in this book was to explore what successful mediation entails. The outcome of such an investigation was the construction of a typology or an IMS which was inductively derived and can be used as a model for the investigation of mediation strategies in different sorts of corpora. As Table 5.1 clearly shows, the model consists of seven main mediation strategies, four of which are Type A strategies and three Type B. These seven main mediation strategies, which are defined in the following sections, are further subdivided. The distinction between Type A and Type B strategies is not arbitrary but it is based on observations and a wide range of analyses conducted during the research project. While Type A strategies concern the way that ideas are incorporated in the target context and how they are linked to each other, Type B strategies concern the language choices on the part of the mediator in his/her effort to handle source information which has to fit into the new/ target linguistic environment. Specifically, Type A strategies, which are described as information-based strategies as they deal with how information is handled, are used by the mediator in order to • • • • • • •

give prominence to certain messages; emphasise certain key points; make explicit and establish connections between ideas; demonstrate understanding of specific information; distinguish between major and minor information; extract details or unnecessary information; group relevant information.

For the aforementioned reasons, the mediator may mix up new with old (or extracted) ideas (Strategy 1), combine relevant ideas found in different parts of the text (Strategy 2), summarise (i.e. transfer the basic ideas) (Strategy 3) or rearrange source ideas (Strategy 4), thus aiming at achieving an effect at the level of content (this content may be either extracted from the source text or inserted by him/her depending on the task at hand).

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Table 5.1 The Inventory of Mediation Strategies Type A mediation strategies 1. Creative blending between extracted and extra-textual information 1a Text level (NOT required by the task) 1b Text level (required by the task) 1c Sentence level (NOT required by the task) 1d Sentence level (required by the task) 2. Combining information 2a Text level 2b Sentence level 3. Summarising Summarising verbal information 3a Summarising part of the text 3a1 Sentence level: sentence extracted transferring the gist 3a2 Text level: main ideas 3a3 Text level: main ideas + extracted concluding or general statement 3a4 Text level: main ideas + inserted concluding or general statement 3a5 Text level: sentence inserted transferring the gist and inserted concluding or general statement 3a6 Text level: sentence inserted transferring the gist + extracted concluding statement 3a7 Text level: topic sentence extracted + main ideas 3a8 Text level: topic sentence extracted + main ideas + inserted concluding statement 3a9 Text level: topic sentence inserted + main ideas 3a10 Text level: topic sentence inserted + main ideas + extracted concluding statement 3a11 Text level: topic sentence inserted + main ideas + inserted concluding statement 3b Summarising the whole text 3b1 Sentence level: sentence inserted transferring the gist 3b2 Text level: main ideas 3b3 Text level: main ideas + extracted concluding statement 3b4 Text level: main ideas + inserted concluding statement 3b5 Text level: topic sentence extracted + main ideas 3b6 Text level: topic sentence extracted + main ideas + extracted concluding statement

(Continued)

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3b7

Text level: topic sentence extracted + main ideas + inserted concluding statement 3b8 Text level: topic sentence inserted + main ideas + inserted concluding statement 3b9 Text level: topic sentence inserted + main ideas Summarising numerical information 3c Sentence level: main numerical information 3d Text level: main numerical information 3e Text level: topic sentence extracted and main numerical information 3f Text level: topic sentence inserted and main numerical information 4 Reorganising extracted information 4a Text level (paragraphs, sentences) 4b Sentence level (clauses, words) 4c (Only when relaying numerical information: Reorganising numerical information) Type B mediation strategies 5 Condensing (at sentence level) by combining two (or more) short sentences into one (sentence fusion) 6 Expanding 6a Breaking one sentence into two (or more) simpler ones 6b Piece of information followed/preceded transferring the gist 6c Piece of information followed/preceded transferring the same meaning 7 Paraphrasing 7a Syntax-level paraphrasing (including lexico-syntactic paraphrasing) 7b Syntax-level paraphrasing (transforming bullets into continuous text) 7c Phrase-level paraphrasing 7d Word-level paraphrasing 7e (Only when relaying numerical information): Presenting information descriptively, verbalising numbers 7f (Only when relaying numerical information): Preserving numbers 7g (Only when relaying numerical information): Presenting information both descriptively and numerically

On the other hand, Type B strategies focus on the language aspects of the relaying process, that is to say, on the level of lexico-grammar and syntax. The strategies of paraphrasis (Strategy 7), expansion of a source sentence into more than one (Strategy 6) or condensation (i.e. combining two source sentences into one) (Strategy 5) refer to the degree to which source syntactic structures and source grammar or vocabulary are handled

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by the mediator when transferring them from one (con)text to another. The use of Type B mediation strategies indicates an effort on the part of the mediator to linguistically transform source sentences, phrases or words (e.g. turning source words into sentences and merging two sentences into one) so as to effectively incorporate source messages into the target environment and produce an appropriate text in the target language, discourse environment or the target text. In fact, Type B strategies are generally used to • •

avoid prolixity and repetition of source information; appropriately integrate source text sentences into the target text or to make the language more appropriate for the target sociolinguistic environment, thereby responding to the new linguistic demands imposed by the target text. For instance, in a formal letter of recommendation, the mediator may prefer to passivise taking into consideration its formal style. Turning active voice (source text) into passive (target text) is one such example of paraphrasing.

Type A and Type B strategies may occur simultaneously, meaning that they are not mutually exclusive. In other words, a unit of text may be assigned to more than one category simultaneously only when the two categories are of different types. A Type B strategy may characterise text segments already coded for one Type A strategy, but two Type B strategies can never occur simultaneously in the same text segment. The same is true for Type A strategies. That means that we may find instances of language use in which reorganisation (a Type A strategy) and paraphrasing (a Type B strategy) may occur simultaneously, given that Type A strategies refer to content while Type B refer to language. Similarly, creative blending or combining (both Type A strategies) may be combined with paraphrasing (a Type B strategy). The following example is taken from a B2 level mediation script (see Appendix 1.2, Task B2.4). It has been coded for combining at the level of text (see Table 5.1, Strategy 2a and also see definition later in this section) while it includes instances of paraphrased (extracted) information (in italics) (Strategy 7). Remi a rat who loves good food got out of his home, and luckily he goes under a restaurant. There he lives his dream with one friend, a young waiter. In fact, the particular mediator not only pulls together information found in different parts of the text referring to a particular movie (Type A strategy), but he/she also caters for the linguistic transformation of the

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source message which has to be appropriate for a TV guide. This is the main reason why he/she employed the strategy of paraphrasis (Type B strategy). The distinction thus made between Type A and Type B strategies accounts for the different properties of the categories included under each group of strategies. As demonstrated later in this book, this distinction has been empirically validated through the analysis of scripts. It has been demonstrated that Type A strategies require more sophisticated skills on the part of the mediator who has to be competent and ‘mature’ enough with the target language in order to successfully handle source content. 5 By contrast, Type B strategies, which concern mere linguistic transformation of source (or extra-textual) messages within single sentences, do not seem to discriminate between low- or high-level, competent or less-competent language users. In addition, different sorts of task requirements are linked to different types of strategies, which are discussed in Chapter 6. It is not only the distinction between the two types of strategies that is relevant and important when discussing the inventory but also the distinction between text and sentence level. As becomes evident in Table 5.1, the notion of ‘level’ seems to be crucial when discussing Type A strategies. The use of mediation strategies at the level of text shows an effort on the part of the mediator to alter the source text structure in order to produce a text appropriate for the purposes of a particular communicative context. Text-level strategies, in other words, are related to the way that source messages are organised across paragraphs or across sentences when transferred into the target environment. When discussing the textual aspects, we refer to the way that information is presented in and across paragraphs, or how sentences are linked to each other. Sentence-level strategies, on the other hand, concern the way that source information is presented, organised or combined within a single sentence. Under each type of strategy in the following subsections, further information is given in relation to the aforementioned subdivision of strategies (text vs sentence level).

Type A mediation strategies Creative blending between extracted and extra-textual information Given that mediators compose from sources, the texts they produce are blends of the content from two kinds of content pools, i.e. the source text and their own stored or background knowledge. Therefore, the blending of new or extra-textual information with source information

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is very likely to occur in mediation scripts. When totally relevant, extratextual information appropriate for the new context is ‘mixed’ with source information and is fully incorporated into the new context, then creative blending occurs. This seems to constitute one of the most successful strategies found in the scripts under investigation (see Table 5.1, Strategy 1). When extra-textual information is not naturally combined with textual information, resulting in the production of an incoherent, unevenly flowing text, then the simple insertion of information – and not creative blending – is said to occur. Therefore, although added content may be appropriate to the context of situation, it may not always be blended creatively. Note that a prerequisite for a stretch of text to be considered creative blending is that the new information should always be relevant to the task at hand. When inserted information is irrelevant, creative blending between extracted and extra-textual information does not occur. Creative blending may be accomplished through a variety of means, such as transferring the gist of source information and mixing it with the extra-textual information or reorganising source content and transferring it mixed together with the ‘new’, as illustrated in Example 1. (1) Target text (TT): It’s the best musical with a perfect acting! You will really enjoy the funny dancing and of course the plot of the movie. A lovely fat girl, which is starring, makes an effort to be famous! [2008A_KPG90]6 The sentences in italics are the extra-textual, inserted information, which has been ‘mixed’ with the source information. As regards the inserted information, it has been very successfully incorporated into the new context, transferring the gist of the source text (e.g. by using the expression ‘the plot of the movie’ which is briefly referred to in the source text) and combining it with extra-textual information used in order to achieve the communicative goal (e.g. ‘It’s the best musical with a perfect acting’), which is to recommend the film to a teenager. The possible combinations which can occur when there is creative blending between ‘new’ and ‘old’ information are • • • •

Inserted + extracted piece of information. Extracted + inserted piece of information. Inserted + extracted + inserted piece of information. Inserted + inserted + extracted piece of information.

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The degree of blending and creativity may, of course, differ even in scripts of similar performance. Furthermore, creative blending of source and added information – the degree to which each is used can also vary – may occur at text (Strategy 1a–1b) or sentence level (Strategy 1c–1d). The mixing at text level, as is evident in Example 2, occurs when whole paragraphs or sentences are inserted (see italics) and appropriately connected with those referring to the original text to such an extent that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between extra-textual and textual information. (2) In addition to that, I believe that we should all start to recycle. Generally, it is my opinion that recycling is not given as much consideration as needed, as it is a way to protect our energy sources and it helps us be more responsible towards the environment. For example, we could choose to wear clothes made by recycled plastic bottles or buy books from recycled paper. This, of course, does not mean we have to live like cave men, however we could have a small, but considerable, contribution in saving the planet. [2008A_C1_1] The sentence in italics has been inserted and creatively linked to the previous one (which refers to recycling rather generally) and to the following one, which gives an example of how recycling can be achieved in our everyday life, which is also provided by the source text. What has been added here, in other words, is an opinion or a suggestion about how people should view recycling. The register and style is appropriate and the communicative goal (i.e. to suggest ways to save the planet) has been achieved. Similarly, in Example 3 (which is of lower-proficiency level) the first two sentences convey information already stated in the Greek text while the meaning conveyed via the sentence in italics has been inserted and blended with the previous sentences. (3) You must know that this kind of diet refers to the way that people of Mediterranean are eating. To understand it better, imagine a pyramid. To the top there is the unhealthy food and as you’re going down you see healthier food and it must be eaten more often. [2009A_B1_20] Extra-textual information may also be inserted when it is not directly required by the task but it is absolutely relevant to the task. For example, in the next example, the first sentence has been added in order to introduce the topic of the text and is then linked to the second one which transfers source text information.

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(4) It is commonly known nowadays that consumerism is expanding like a disease in modern societies. We tend to consume more and more products every day, most of which cause an irreparable damage to the environment. So, firstly, I think we should start consume with moderation, listening to our own needs and not the fake ones that advertising creates. [2008A_C1_1] At the sentence level, words or phrases may be added within a single sentence, reconstructing it and finally generating new content which combines information taken from two different sources, i.e. the source text and the background schemata (or extra-textual information) that the writers bring to the text. In Example 5, the inserted words or phrases creatively linked to the source text information are indicated in italics. (5) We should focus not just on small – scale activities - like recycling plastic botles and campaigning against companies with high carbon dioxide emissions - but also to some radical changes on how we perceive the concept of every-day life: how and where we live, how we move, what we consume…[2008A_C1_3] It should be noted that the insertion of content that does not add new meaning to the text but simply paraphrases the original is not considered as an instance of creative blending but rather of paraphrasing.

Combining information extracted from the source text While the previous strategy refers to the mixing of ‘textual’ with ‘extra-textual’ information, the combining of textual information refers to the successful mixing of information selectively extracted from different parts of the source text and, by definition, it may involve exclusion and/or regrouping of certain pieces of source information (see Table 5.1, Strategy 2).7 Information from different parts of the source text may not only be combined but also contrasted depending, of course, on the purpose to be achieved. Being a Type A strategy, the combining of extracted information occurs both at the text and sentence levels. At the text level (Strategy 2a), sentences from different parts of the text are combined and the meanings they convey are presented together, as in the following example (see Appendix 1.2, Task C1.1 for the original Greek text). (6) It is pretty well understood that there is no return to the stone age way of living, of minimum transportation and consumption.

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Therefore, instead of minimizing our needs…I suggest that we should rather try to develop within a different framework, where everything would be accounted as necessary or not depending on the impact it has on the environment. [2008A_C1_3] At the sentence level (Strategy 2b), what is combined may be words or phrases from different parts of the source text forming a new sentence, as illustrated in Example 7. (7) The cost is only 30 €, but you may have to pay 20 € for an insurance. As for the accomodation, we’ll be staying in a house in the centre of Ermoupoli. The organisation provides our food, but we have to pay our transport expenses. [2009A_B2_16]8 The utterance in italics combines information concerning food and transportation not linked to each other in the source text as they are presented in different sections. Combining is manifested through the linguistic reshaping of the source content which may involve, apart from the use of different linguistic forms, its repositioning. As a matter of fact, this is natural if we consider that the target text is an original text which uses only some pieces of source text information. The organisational pattern of the source text may be modified, probably leading to the production of textual and syntactic transformations (see Example 8). Combined information has been presented in a different order from that of the source text. (8) But this was not only what helped me. In addition, I bought chewing gums which help people stop smoking, and I asked my family and friends, to support me, in my decision to quit this dangerous habit. [2010A_C1_15m]9 Despite the repositioning which occurred, the same segment could be coded for both combining and reorganising as, according to the model, they are both characterised as Type A strategies. It is thus considered as an instance of combining source information which, by definition, may involve some relocation of information. Generally, combining as a strategy seems to reduce the possibility of repetitions of similar information and contributes to the coherence and smooth flow of the target text. Its application is actually an indication of the mediator’s capacity to infer relationships among different pieces of source information.

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Summarising Summarisation refers to the condensing of source content by excluding parts of the source text that do not add new information according to the communicative purpose set by the task and to the transfer of the relevant information in the source text in a condensed way, along with the accompanying linguistic reformulations. The category of summarising includes the majority of subcategories because many different possible ways of summarising source content have been spotted. ‘Compres[sing] the text to its gist’ are the words used by Spivey (1990: 265) when referring to the process of summarising. Hood (2008: 356) explains that: ‘[Summarisation] is often portrayed as fundamentally one of reduction in wording, as an exercise in “pruning”, “shortening”, “forsaking”, “disregarding”, “discarding” or “omitting” parts of the original source text’. In the case of mediation activities, the information ultimately selected and summarised is adapted to fit the new linguistic environment and this adaptation is usually manifested through paraphrasing or through other means, such as the inclusion of additional words, phrases or whole sentences, or even through reorganising pieces of information. Traditionally, a summarised item is defined as a brief statement that represents the condensing of information accessible to a subject and reflects the gist (central ideas or essence) of the discourse, as Johnson (1983: 473) maintains. According to Hidi and Anderson (1986: 473), ‘summarisation requires the comprehension, evaluation, condensation, and frequent transformation of ideas that have been presented’. Traditional research investigates summarisation from the perspective of the summary writer and his/her choices (cf. Kirkland & Saunders, 1991; Susar & Akkaya, 2009), which are dependent on the cognitive demands of the task (Yu, 2008) and the quality demands of the texts to be summarised (cf. Asención, 2006) along with the cognitive operations involved when dealing with such tasks (i.e. how to plan and generate new content, what to include from the original text, how to combine or transform ideas, etc.) (cf. Hidi & Anderson, 1986; Sherrard, 1985).10 However, this work, although it creatively exploits the way that summarisation has been defined in the past, adopts a different perspective. Summarisation is not seen, and thus is not investigated, as a cognitive process, but rather as a strategy manifested in texts responding to tasks which require relaying messages from one language to another (rather than in texts responding to summary tasks). While educational researchers have seen summarisation as the process involved only in summary tasks, this work sees summarisation as one of the many strategies used for the production of the mediation text. In many cases, the general requirements of mediation tasks are such that

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summarisation is required in order for them to be carried out successfully. A variety of summarisation strategies are presented in Table 5.1 and are briefly discussed in the following text. Specifically, there are two main categories of summarisation strategies, both of which are related to the nature of the source information being summarised, that is, whether it is verbal or numerical. Thus, the typology distinguishes between summarising verbal information and summarising numerical information. The fact that the amount of information relayed in a summarised form was differentiated across scripts, led to the creation of two further categories which refer to the ‘summarising of the whole text’ as opposed to the ‘summarising of part of the text’. The whole text may be summarised in either a paragraph or in one or more sentences. As regards summarising parts of the source text (Table 5.1, Strategy 3a) rather than the whole text, summarised segments may take the form of a statement transferring the gist of the original part (Strategy 3a1). The following example is illustrative of this strategy of summarising a message (conveyed through multiple sentences in the source text) by using only one sentence. (9) The first film is Ratatouie in which a small rat named Remi gets into great trouble and into great adventoures when he is forced to live his home. [2008A_B2_100]11 Additionally, a general statement may be followed by another more general one which may be inserted or extracted from the source text (see Strategies 3ab, 3a6). Summarised parts of the source text may also include only its main ideas (Strategy 3a2) (see Example 10) or the source main ideas may be followed by a concluding or general statement which may be either totally ‘new’ (Strategy 3a4) or extracted from the source text (Strategy 3a3). (10) Another film worth seeing is ‘Spiderman 3’. Our hero is planning to get married with a girl who faces problems. In addition to this, a new enemy, Sandman, appears and something evil affects Spiderman. [2008A_B2_58]12 In addition, a topic sentence may precede the transferred main ideas. This topic sentence may be ‘new’ (Strategy 3a9) or ‘old’ (Strategy 3a7) and sometimes both the topic sentence and the main ideas may be followed by concluding or general statements (either extracted or added) (see Strategies 3a8, 3a10, 3a11). In Example 11, the introductory sentence has

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been extracted from the source text, while the final sentence has been inserted by the writer in order to justify why the film is worth seeing and finally to recommend it. The rest of the information summarises the content of part of the source text. (11) Mumble is a penguin who is good at dancing. That’s not good for penguin because penguins have to sing the Song of Heart in order to find a wife. Although he is being critisised by his family and peers he will find love by dancing. Although this sounds a romance movie is a perfect family comedy. [2008A_B2_143]13 The subcategories mentioned above, involving the introduction or extraction of a topic sentence, are in line with Hidi and Anderson’s (1986: 480) claims. These authors also mention the possibility of the introduction of a topic sentence in a summarised paragraph. When the whole source text is summarised (Strategy 3b) (see Example 12), what is transferred in the target text may relay the main ideas (Strategy 3b2) which may or may not be preceded by a topic sentence (either inserted or extracted) (Strategy 3b5, 3b9) or which may or may not be followed by a concluding statement (either inserted or extracted) (Strategies 3b3, 3b4). What is more, main ideas may be presented in combination with a topic sentence and a concluding statement simultaneously (Strategies 3b6–3b8). In Example 12, an introductory statement (in italics) not included in the source text precedes the main ideas (see Appendix 1.2, Task B1.3 for the source text). (12) Well you must find time, but up until then you can follow some simple instructions that will cheer you up. First of all you must set your alarm clock to ring with your favorite radio station. That will cheer you up from the beginning of the day. A good breakfast with plenty of fruits is also a good idea. Last but not least, I know that you like to ride you bike, so next time use your ipod while doing so. Do these little tricks and let me know soon. [2010A_B1_11] When numerical information is transferred in summarised form (Strategies 3c1–3c4), the types of summarisation techniques are more limited in number and range. However, the same distinction between textand sentence-level summarisation occurs. Transferring the main numerical information, either preceded by a topic sentence or not (Strategies 3c3, 3c4), constitutes a type of summarisation technique (see Example 13 and the source text from which it draws information in Appendix 1.2, Task B2.3).

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(13) The survey shows that 70% of young people watch television in their free time while 59% prefer using the computer and only 50% of young people in Greece spend their free time with friends. The activities with the less popularity are: concerts and music, painting and resting. [2010A_B2_1] To close this section, there are varying degrees of summarisation as the amount of information lifted from the source text may range from limited to more extensive, depending on a variety of factors (e.g. type of task and performance level). The degree of transformation of source information (i.e. what and how it is transferred) to fit in the new environment may also be diverse as it is the task that imposes certain restrictions in relation to what type of language to be used. To what extent summarising differs qualitatively (in terms of the language used) across proficiency levels will be discussed in Chapter 7.

Reorganising This particular strategy is related to the order in which the transferred information is presented in the target context. Preserving the overall organisational pattern of the source text is not very common when composing a new text from source information, although writers may have that option, as Spivey (1990: 265) argues. Reorganising information occurs when source information is not presented and sequenced in the target text in the same way that it appears in the source text. Whole paragraphs, sentences or clauses may be reorganised and for this reason the typology distinguishes between reorganising at the text (i.e. paragraphs and sentences) and the sentence level (i.e. clauses, phrases and words). For example, if A, B and C represent paragraphs, sentences, clauses, phrases or words found in the source text, then reorganising may occur in the following cases: Source text order: A + B + C Target text order: A + C + B or B + C + A or C + B + A As regards the rearrangement of paragraphs or sentences (see Example 14), the message included in the first paragraph of the source text, for instance, may appear at the end of the target text, demonstrating a tendency to not preserve the overall organisational pattern of the source text (see Appendix 1.2, Task B1.1, for the source text). (14) 1. Before you go to your bedroom, drink a glass of hot milk. It will help you to sleep more easily. 2. It would be a helpful idea if you went to sleep the same time every night.

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3. You can also take exersise a couple of hours before you go to sleep. If you do this, you can take the stress away and sleep easily, too. I hope that I help you by giving you these tips! Let me know soon. [2008A_B1_5_OK] When the position of clauses, phrases or words within the same sentence is shifted, then reorganising occurs at the level of the sentence. In other words, sentence or clause constituents may be rearranged without being linguistically altered. In fact, when a change in order is accompanied by a change in the wording of the transferred items, then I do not consider such cases as manifestations of reorganising but of paraphrasing (see Type B strategies). An example of reorganising at the sentence level is provided in Example 15, where there is a shift in the order of the three phrases, ‘the citizens, the public and the visitors’ since in the source text, the phrase ‘the public’ comes first. No other changes are involved in this particular coded segment. (15) Also the only thing that we have to do is to inform the citizens, the public and the visitors about the birds of Egeo and the worth of the surrounding. [2009A_B2_26]14 Reorganising clauses or sentences may occur for many different reasons. The communicative goal to be achieved may, first of all, direct the ‘re-ranking’ of source ideas, meanings and information. In addition, it may indicate the mediator’s intention to make certain information more prominent. As illustrated in Table 5.1, reorganising not only refers to verbal information but it may also refer to numerical information. Information provided through charts (as in the source text of the B2 level May 2010 task, see Appendix 1.2, Task B2.3) may be presented in a different sequence from the one appearing in the source text, most likely in order to emphasise something and/or present the results in groups (see Example 16). (16) According to the survey, a high percentage of young people use to watch TV and use their computer for fun, while the percentage of teenagers in Greece who hang out with friends has reduced to 50%. In addition, only 30% spend their free time by exercising themselves and doing sports, while only a small percentage of teenagers use to spend their free time by watching films, reading books, listening to music and painting pictures. All that while only 50% of young people rest in their free time. [2012A_B2_17]

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Type B mediation strategies Moving on to Type B mediation strategies, as already mentioned, their use indicates an effort on the part of the mediator to transform source sentences, phrases or words so as to effectively incorporate them into the target environment. They actually refer to linguistic transformations which transformations concern the linguistic means by which information is conveyed in the target environment. Two strategies which are characterised by binary opposition, are condensing and expanding. The terms ‘condensation’ and ‘expansion’ are associated with the phenomena of linguistically ‘tightening’ and ‘slackening’ (Taylor, 1998: 56) source text expressions for the target text version. Paraphrasing is also discussed towards the end of this section.

Condensing Condensing calls for the contraction of a source item in order to render it more compact, an aim that is achieved through combining two short sentences into one (what I call sentence fusion) (Strategy 5). For instance, ‘It is not easy to quit smoking but it is not impossible either ’ is used instead of the source text expression ‘Quiting smoking is difficult. However, it is not impossible’ [Το να το κόψει κανείς είναι δύσκολο. Ωστόσο δεν είναι ακατόρθωτο]. As the example illustrates, expressing the same information in fewer words is the very essence of condensing. ‘Condensation’, a term borrowed from translation studies, may echo an effort on the part of the writer to avoid prolixity.

Expanding Expanding refers to conveying the same source text information in the target text but in a longer form or by using more words. The source text item is expanded without extra information being added. Breaking one sentence into two simpler ones conveying the same meaning is a type of expanding (Strategy 6a).15 For instance, the source item ‘Κάντε ποικιλία ασκήσεων για να μην πλήττετε’ (‘Do a variety of exercises so that you will not get bored’) is transferred as ‘Try a variety of exercises. You will not get bored if you do so’. In the following example, the meaning conveyed through the main clause ‘That is what the scientists say’ is conveyed in the source text (ST) through a complex sentence. (17) TT: Try to make a programm of your sleeping and try to go for sleep the same time every day. That is what the scientists say. [2008A_B1_11] ST: Η άσκηση στη διάρκεια της μέρας είναι το καλύτερο «υπνωτικό χάπι»: η ιδανική άσκηση, σύμφωνα με τους ειδικούς, είναι αυτή που γίνεται 4-6 ώρες πριν από τον ύπνο.

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[Exercising during the day may be the best sleeping pill: the best exercise, according to the scientists, is done 4-6 before going to bed] Additionally, expanding may take the following forms: an inserted piece of information may be followed or preceded by a piece of information extracted from the source text, as in the following examples. In Examples 18 and 19, the first sentence in each is general while the one which follows specifies the meaning of the first. (18) This programm is about sea birds of Aegean. We will have to inform inhabitats and tourists about them. [2009A_B2_31]16 (19) My last advice is to calm down before you sleep. Don’t take with you all the problems! [2008A_B1_18]17 Lastly, the inserted message may transfer the gist or convey the same meaning as the extracted message (Strategy 6b, 6c). In Example 20, the source message ‘Ask for their [your relatives’] support’, has been transferred as ‘Ask for their help and support’. The verb ‘help’, which conveys a similar meaning, has been introduced probably in order to reinforce the meaning of ‘support’. (20) The second thing you should do is to inform your friends and close people that you are going to quit smoking. Ask for their help and support. [2010_C1_2m]18 To use more words in the target text in order to re-express an idea or to reinforce the sense of a source word, phrase, clause or sentence usually serves the purpose of becoming more explicit, emphatic or analytical. In other cases, the strategy of expanding may occur for linguistic reasons as the exact meaning of the source content may not be expressed as concisely in the target language.

Paraphrasing Paraphrasing, another strategy detected in mediation scripts, reflects an effort to integrate source information into the target text without depending on the source wording, by using different words with a similar meaning. Paraphrases are alternative ways of conveying the same information (Bannard & Callison-Burch, 2005: 597; Callison-Burch, 2008: 196; Li et al., 2005: 49; Zhao et al., 2008: 1021), meaning that they occur when parts of the source text are linguistically modified without the meaning being significantly altered. Pang et al. (2003: 102) define paraphrases as sets or pairs of semantically equivalent words, phrases and

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patterns. In fact, paraphrased items are those which contain at least one word-level change. This work sharply distinguishes between interlingual (across languages) and intralingual paraphrasing (i.e. within the same language), a distinction also appearing in the literature either explicitly as, for example, in Milićević (2009) and Barreiro (2008), or implicitly as, for example, in Mowarin (2009). This work actually deals with interlingual paraphrasing which becomes evident by different means, as explained below. Keck (2006), who has dealt with academic writing and first language (L1) and L2 writers’ use of paraphrase within a summary task, sees paraphrasing as a textual borrowing strategy. Johns and Mayes (1990) and Winograd (1984) regard paraphrasing as a form of reproduction in which writers almost exactly copy one part of a source text, while Campbell (1990: 216) makes a distinction between near copies and the strategy of paraphrasing, which she describes as involving ‘more syntactic changes of the original […] text than Near Copies’. Shi (2004) moves on to identify two different levels of paraphrase: parts of a text which are ‘closely paraphrased by reformulating syntax or changing wording of the original text’ (Shi, 2004: 178) and those that contain ‘no trace of direct borrowing of two or three consecutive words from source texts’ (Shi, 2004: 178–179). She calls this latter type of paraphrase ‘total paraphrases’. In academic writing, much research has been conducted in order to investigate whether students’ texts as a result of integrated reading– writing tasks contain too much copying and evaluate the quality of the paraphrased instances (Shi, 2012; Weigle & Parker, 2012) or examine the perceptions and attitudes of students and teachers on the appropriate use of textual borrowing (Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). In all cases, paraphrasing has been investigated within the framework of discussing plagiarism (cf. Li & Casanave, 2012). Despite attempts to classify a writer’s textual borrowing strategies into different categories, a reliable method for describing different paraphrase types has not been established (Keck, 2006: 263). Campbell (1990: 216), who has also used different categories of textual borrowing (i.e. exact copy, near copy and paraphrase) in her study, admits that these represent ‘points along a continuum rather than clearly defined separate categories, making interpretation problematic’. Moreover, paraphrasing has been a prominent strategy in translation, and as noted by Ivarsson (1992: 92, found in Zhang & Liu, 2009: 115), ‘sometimes paraphrases are unavoidable when it is impossible to actually skip anything that is said’. In the present book, paraphrasing is considered on the basis of two parameters: form and meaning. While source and target form may vary,

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meaning may remain unchanged or be slightly modified. In other words, when source messages are paraphrased, meaning may be preserved, simplified or slightly modified. If meaning is totally modified, then we cannot speak of paraphrasing, as paraphrasing by nature implies the retaining of meaning articulated by means of different words. The distinction between syntactic, phrasal and lexical paraphrasing has been widely discussed in the literature related to the practice of translation and specifically by computational linguists aiming at creating tools to facilitate machine translation (cf. Barreiro, 2008; CallisonBurch, 2007; Dorr et al., 2004; Madnani & Dorr, 2010; Pang et al., 2003; Shimohata, 2004; Yamamoto, 2002). Computational linguists aiming at producing mechanisms for automatically generating multiple paraphrases of a given sentence (cf. Barzilay & Lee, 2003) have also distinguished between sentence and lexical paraphrasing. As Barzilay and Lee (2003: 16) characteristically state, ‘sentence-level paraphrasing is an important problem extending beyond that of paraphrasing smaller lexical units’. The distinction between syntactic-, phrasal- and word-level paraphrasing has also been raised by scholars interested in the investigation of the process of summarisation (cf. Keck, 2006). According to these scholars, when a pair of words (i.e. a source word and a target word) of the same part of speech has an identical or similar meaning, this is considered as an instance of word-level paraphrasing. ‘When two paraphrases have more than a word of difference’ (Barreiro, 2008: 31), paraphrasing operates at the phrasal level and finally, ‘when paraphrasing extends to more than a word or phrase, it operates at the sentence level’ (Barreiro, 2008) and is called syntactic paraphrasing. Note that syntactic paraphrasing may also imply the reorganisation of the syntactic structure of the original sentence. Table 5.2 includes all possible cases of paraphrasing in the sample under investigation and has been inductively developed. As evident in Table 5.2, this work identifies instances of syntax-level paraphrasing as syntactic changes made to parts of the source text. In line with this definition, Shimohata (2004: 16) views sentential paraphrasing as entailing changes in the principal information of the original sentence. According to him, ‘principal information refers to the headword of the subject, the predicate and modality’. Sentence(s), clause(s) or phrase(s) may be paraphrased through syntactic reformulation, which means through a change in the source syntax or the structure of the sentence unit (Strategy 7a). This may entail a change in the relationship between main and subordinate clauses, a rank shift or a voice change or a word order change. When a compound sentence (i.e. consisting of two or more main clauses) is changed into either a complex (i.e. consisting of a main

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Table 5.2 Types of paraphrasing Syntax-level paraphrasing 1. Lexico-syntactic paraphrasing 2. Sentence level Sentence structure change (compound > complex > simple) Word order change Voice change 3. Clause level Clause structure change (main > subordinate) Clause type change (enhancement, elaboration, extension) Clause-mood change (declarative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory) Clause relation change 4. Other restructuring techniques Rank change (sentence > clause > phrase) Negative construction to statement (and vice versa) Omission of certain lexical elements Phrase-level paraphrasing 1. Phrase-level paraphrasing: phrase-type change 2. Phrase-level paraphrasing: rank change (phrase > word) Word-level paraphrasing 1. Rank change (word > phrase), same meaning 2. Semantic paraphrases Providing an equivalent word, same meaning Providing an equivalent word, similar meaning Providing an equivalent word, slightly different meaning Providing a superordinate (generalisation) Providing a subordinate (particularisation) 3. Formal paraphrases Word class Number change Tense change Aspect change (progressive > perfect, perfect > progressive) Person change

and at least one subordinate) or a simple sentence (i.e. containing one main clause), we speak of sentence structure transformation. Rank transformation, which concerns both sentences and clauses, is another instance of syntax-level paraphrasing and entails the shift from one unit to another. Following Halliday, sentences, clauses, phrases, words

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and morphemes constitute different units with the sentence being the largest of the four units carrying grammatical patterns (i.e. sentences, phrases, clauses and words) and the morpheme the smallest of the four units operating in grammatical patterns (i.e. clauses, phrases, words and morphemes). All five units are arranged hierarchically on a scale of rank (Morley, 2000: 24). When information of a given rank is mediated by means of a different rank, then we speak of rank transformation. Put simply, this type of transformation involves some sort of movement from one level of organisation to another without the meaning being altered. Specific instances of rank transformation may include the altering of a phrase (e.g. ‘Σε αυτό το περιβάλλον’ (‘in this context’) into an adverb (‘There’) or the transformation of a clause (‘…που μας μεταφέρει στη δεκαετία του 60’/‘That takes us to the 60s’) into a phrase (‘in the sixties’). Changing the voice of the sentence from passive to active or vice versa (i.e. voice reformulation) constitutes a type of change affecting the order of certain constituents within the sentence, thus having a different communicative effect, that is, giving or not giving prominence to the actor (cf. Boonthum, 2004; Dorr et al., 2004). Voice reformulation usually serves the purpose of giving the impression of objectivity by distancing the agent from a particular action. Another instance of syntactic paraphrasing refers to clause type change which involves transforming a certain clause type into another, such as turning a clause of purpose into a relative clause. On the contrary, clausemood change involves transforming a certain clause mood (i.e. declarative, interrogative, imperative or exclamatory) into another. For instance, turning declarative into interrogative (and vice versa) constitutes an instance of mood reformulation strategy. In addition, main clauses may also turn into subordinate or vice versa. Before moving on to phrasal paraphrasing, it is important to state that the typology includes one more category relevant to syntactic paraphrasing and this concerns the relaying of text in bullet form into a continuous text. Phrasal paraphrasing changes the structure of a phrase, the order of a phrase or phrase elements (Shimohata, 2004: 17). The term ‘phrasal paraphrase’ refers to phrasal fragments sharing the same or similar semantic content (Madnani & Dorr, 2010: 342). In this context of investigating mediation processes, phrasal paraphrasing is regarded as a type of paraphrasing which includes rank change (i.e. change from a phrase to a single lexical item) and phrase-type change which refers to the shift from one specific phrase type to another (e.g. transferring an adjectival phrase into an adverbial one).19 Providing a word or a phrase with an equivalent or similar meaning is also an instance of paraphrasing at the level of syntax, as

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illustrated in Example 21. The expression ‘begin our day’ [να ξεκινάμε την μέρα μας όσο πιο ευχάριστα γίνεται] has become ‘wake up’ in the target text (Example 21). The meaning of the source phrase has been slightly altered by providing an equivalent word. (21) Another tip is to wake up with a good mood. Try to be calm and relax. I’m sure that my information will help you. [2010A_B1_14] Lastly, at the phrase level, certain lexical items which may provide supplementary information (e.g. adjectives and adverbs) may be excluded. This is also an instance of phrasal paraphrasing. In Example 22, the source phrase (να καταφέρετε να – manage to) in the sentence Η κατανάλωσή του μειώνει τις πιθανότητες να καταφέρετε να αντισταθείτε στο να ξαναρχίσετε το κάπνισμα/‘Its consumption decreases the possibility of resisting to start smoking again’ has been omitted. (22) Be ready to upfront difficult situations and reactions. A first of all and at least for the first week do your best to avoid consuming alkohol. Consuming alkohol decreases the possibility to resist in lighting a sigarette. [2010A_C1_17] Ultimately, word-level paraphrasing refers to changing a word from the source text with the new word conveying the same or a similar meaning to that of the source unit. Lexical paraphrasing simply replaces words and does not change the structure of the original sentence (Shimohata, 2004: 17). In other words, providing an equivalent through which meaning may be retained or slightly modified constitutes a paraphrasing strategy. Discussing word-level paraphrasing within the context of translation, Barreiro (2008) makes a distinction between synonyms and cross-language synonyms (and consequently cross-language near-synonyms), which is useful in an attempt to define word-level paraphrasing for the purposes of this work. According to Barreiro, synonyms are lexical items sharing the same meaning in the source and target language. Similarly, discussing near-synonyms, Edmonds (1999) points out that [...] since different languages need to be able to express the same meanings as each other, cross-linguistic near-synonyms are a reality. And there is no fundamental distinction between cross-linguistic near-synonyms and near-synonyms within a single language; they could all be grouped into one huge usage note. (Edmonds, 1999: 44)

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However, in this book, I prefer to use the term ‘equivalent’ to refer to ‘cross-linguistic synonyms’ and ‘synonym’ to refer to the conventional meaning of the term which is related to sameness between words of the same language. Therefore, I regard an ‘equivalent’ as a word in the target language with the same or a similar meaning to a source word. Given that a certain language may always contain words or expressions for concepts which do not have a direct equivalent in the target language, I make a distinction between an equivalent with the same meaning, an equivalent with a similar meaning and an equivalent with a slightly different meaning in order to highlight the slight variations and subtle distinctions or nuances of meaning. Barreiro (2008: 25) maintains that ‘the optimal paraphrase is the closest possible in meaning to the original sentence, but sometimes paraphrasing is difficult to achieve without resorting to the strategy of including near-synonyms’. Near-synonymy is defined by Edmonds (1999: 4) as the property of several words that are very close in meaning, yet not identical, for whatever reason. Moreover, providing a phrase instead of a word with a similar meaning constitutes a word-level paraphrasing strategy. An instance of such a strategy is when ‘κωμωδία’ (‘comedy’), which is a single word, is transferred as ‘a very funny movie’, which is a nominal phrase. Change in the word class, 20 change in number, change in tense or aspect and change in person are some more cases which can be identified as instances of word-level paraphrasing. Moreover, both particularisation and generalisation constitute instances of paraphrasing, as they involve some change in the source wording, with the meaning being slightly modified. Specifically, particularisation refers to the strategy of making certain content more concrete and specific by substituting a superordinate with a subordinate. Barreiro (2008: 27) also regards hyponyms or hypernyms in the target language as manifestations of paraphrasing strategies and Yamamoto (2004) considers hypernyms as instances of paraphrasing when they occur within the same language, contributions also adopted in the present book. The Greek ‘αδέρφια’ (‘siblings’), for example, could be relayed as the more concrete and differentiated ‘brothers and sisters’ depending of course on the context and the desired effect. Another example of particularisation may be the relaying of ‘νέοι’ (‘young people’) into ‘students’. On the contrary, generalisation, which is also considered a word-level paraphrasing technique, concerns the substitution of a subordinate with a superordinate. Hidi and Anderson (1986: 480) define it as the subsumption of details into higher-level categories. The substitution, for instance, of a proper name (‘John’) with a word referring

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to the same person (e.g. ‘man’) or of ‘βιολί’ (‘violin’) with ‘a musical instrument’ are instances of generalisation. As a final comment, when multiword expressions are paraphrased into English, the type of paraphrasing strategy occurring is both syntactic and lexical. For instance, when the source item ‘επιτυγχάνω νίκη’ meaning ‘have a victory’ is transferred as ‘win’, this is an example of paraphrase operating at the lexico-syntactic level (cf. Barreiro, 2008). From the above, it becomes evident that the strategy of paraphrasing has many different manifestations, all taken into account when analysing the data for the purposes of this study. What matters in this chapter is not only how mediation strategies are defined and how they are organised to contribute to a framework, but also how this framework was developed and how it was used for strategy detection in actual scripts. The following sections provide such details.

Towards Exploring Mediation Strategies The aforementioned strategies have been derived following a strenuous procedure of studying mediation texts with a view to creating a typology of strategies. The task of exploring the nature of mediation ability has been a challenging one, demanding maximum interpretational efforts and involving multiple stages.

Analysing texts: A literature review The first step towards the investigation of mediation strategies was to review previous studies which involved textual analysis, and particularly studies which focused on discovering what features differentiate corpora. Specifically, such studies have informed the statistical analysis of the data, have proved particularly important for conducting the qualitative analysis of this research and have in a sense shaped the design of the research as a whole. The basic aim of the studies that are briefly presented in this section, was the identification of certain characteristics which are different across texts at various proficiency levels and performances. To start with Grant and Ginther’s (2000) research, they have used a computerised tagger to investigate what writers of varying proficiency levels do, and also to explore whether there are any differences in terms of the linguistic features employed by less and more proficient writers. As their level of proficiency increases and the writers develop their linguistic competence, Grant and Ginther note an overall increase in the use of conjuncts, amplifiers, emphatics, demonstratives, nominalisations, modals,

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subordination and finally essay length, which are all indicative of mature writing. In much the same vein, Espada-Gustilo’s study (2011), which uses a corpus linguistic approach to analysing texts produced by users of English, has aimed at investigating the characteristics of English as a second language (ESL) writing (e.g. general text characteristics, lexical features, clause-level features and grammatical features) as revealed in essays of freshmen college students across proficiency levels and how they differ. The analysis has shown that most of the linguistic characteristics increased steadily as the level [of proficiency] increased and there was a significant difference in all proficiency levels for all the categories under investigation. Another study, creatively exploited for the purposes of this research and particularly for the investigation of the linguistic features of mediation strategies, was conducted by Ferris (1993), who examines how texts produced in placement exams by learners of varying proficiency groups differ in their use of linguistic and textual features.21 His results suggest that writers in the more proficient group seem to employ more textual features in their compositions, more specific lexical categories (e.g. emphatics), a variety of syntactic patterns (e.g. adverbial and relative clauses) and more cohesive devices (e.g. synonymy and definite article reference). In addition, the length of an essay has been found to be a significant predictor of its quality. A relevant study concerning L2 writing development has been carried out by Shaw and Liu (1998), who investigated learners’ writing before and after they had taken full-time English for academic purposes courses, with a view to finding out any changes in the frequencies of linguistic features related to impersonality, formality and explicitness. Using a concordancing programme in addition to making hand counts of features, they have looked at register features, such as causal expressions, sentence connectors, voice and cohesive devices. The researchers’ findings reveal that L2 writers moved from a more ‘spoken’ type of discourse (i.e. vague connectors such as ‘so’, causal subordinators such as ‘because’ and active voice) to a more formal, ‘written’ type of discourse over time (e.g. use of passives). Becker (2010) reports on a study conducted on a sample of essays written by ESL students attending an intensive English program (IEP) in the United States. Specifically, the study has aimed at finding out whether certain features of written discourse generated from a writing test task varied in texts produced by three groups of students in the IEP. The results have demonstrated that certain writing features (e.g. words per T-unit, clauses per T-unit and text length) clearly distinguish

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students’ writing at different levels of proficiency, while other features (e.g. coherence, cohesion and lexical density) do not appear to distinguish students’ writing at all. Using a genre-based research methodology to determine the rhetorical organisation of the introductions and endings of essays, Henry and Roseberry (1997) attempted to identify correlations between linguistic features and the functions they perform. A corpus of 40 essays was created and it was found that even though the essay includes an exceedingly wide range of topics, styles and text lengths, the essay introductions and conclusions did, in fact, exhibit many clearly identifiable generic discourse and linguistic features (Henry & Roseberry, 1997: 479). Other studies reviewed concerned the examination of the linguistic features of texts mainly by using corpus-based approaches. Such linguistic analyses on learner corpora have been carried out by researchers in order to describe the differing use of linguistic features at different stages of proficiency (cf. Becker, 2010; Espada-Gustilo, 2011; Ferris, 1993; Grant & Ginther, 2000; Henry & Roseberry, 1997; Kiany & Nejad, 2001; Shaw & Liu, 1998). Certain studies, relevant to my aims especially for the qualitative part of the analysis, have particularly focused on predicting proficiency in writing by using language learner texts as corpora (cf. Crossley et al., 2010, 2011; Crossley & Salsbury, 2010; Espada-Gustilo, 2011). Research concerning the use of computational models in accounting for the development of varying competences (i.e. lexis), writing sophistication and writing quality (cf. Baba & Nitta, 2010; Crossley & McNamara, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c; Crossley et al., 2011; McNamara et al., 2010; Roscoe et al., 2011; Rus et al., 2011; Weston et al., 2010, 2011, 2012) has also been considered. Lastly, studies concerning stylistic text classification and the investigation of features or structures that differentiate genres (cf. Argamon et al., 2007; Beers & Nagy, 2011; Crossley, 2007, 2008; Crossley et al., 2007; McCarthy et al., 2006) were also relevant.

An inductive approach to data analysis As little is known about the area of mediation and no model or blueprint that would help with the identification of certain features was available, it was critical to use an inductive approach to data analysis (rather than deductive) which would allow issues to unfold and would finally form my specific research objectives. The inductive approach, which is commonly used in qualitative research (cf. Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003; Rabinovich & Kacen, 2010), is a systematic procedure for examining data in which data gathering and analysis is oriented to developing concepts, insights

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and understandings from patterns in the data rather than gathering data to assess preconceived models, hypotheses or theories (Taylor & Bogdan, 1998: 7–8, found in O’Donoghue, 2007: 59). As far as this research is concerned, inductive analysis refers to the approach that mainly uses detailed readings of raw data to derive concepts of a whole model through interpretations made by the researcher (Thomas, 2006: 238) and concerns the move from raw text to research concerns in small steps, each step building on the previous one (cf. Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003). Thomas (2006) very aptly describes the purposes of such an approach: 1. 2.

3.

to condense extensive and varied raw text data into a brief, summary format; to establish clear links between the research objectives and the summary findings derived from the raw data and to ensure that these links are both transparent (able to be demonstrated to others) and defensible (justifiable given the objectives of the research); and to develop a model or theory about the underlying structure of experiences or processes that are evident in the text data (Thomas, 2006: 238)

An inductive approach to data analysis has been commonly used in health and social science research (cf. Appleton, 1995; Backett & Davison, 1995; Carolan et al., 2000; Cullen-Erickson, 1994; Mallik, 1998; Pomrenke, 2007; Välimäki, 1998; Yates et al., 1995) and more recently in business within the framework of globalisation and internationalisation (cf. de Julho, 2010).22 Relatively limited research using this particular approach to data analysis has been undertaken in education (cf. Carrington & Graham, 2001; Liggett et al., 1994; Panyan et al., 1997; Savin-Baden et al., 2008; Si, 2012; Tosun, 2000; Weigle & Parker, 2012) and L2/foreign language didactics (cf. Canagarajah, 2011b; Ling, 2004). The inductive approach is evident in various types of qualitative data analyses, especially in grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990/1998). Grounded theory, the principles of which are reflected in the present work, was first outlined by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967. Their book, entitled The Discovery of Grounded Theory, was crucial in the broader development of qualitative research methodology (Croker, 2009: 17). Huber and Gürtler (2004: 93) claim that the term ‘discovery’ in the title of the book accentuates the difference of grounded theory from methodological approaches which are applied to confirm given theories. Thomas and James (2006: 19–20) raise the distinction between ‘discovery’ and ‘invention’,

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mentioning that grounded theory is related to the notion of discovery which involves ‘the disclosure of well-hidden but already existing phenomena; it concerns things which exist, albeit that they’re hard to find’. In more practical terms, according to grounded theory, ‘the researcher begins with an area of study and allows the theory to emerge from the data’ (Strauss & Corbin, 1998: 12), meaning that the data collection and data analysis are done in a parallel fashion rather than consecutively as a oneoff set of activities (O’Donoghue, 2007: 61). This interrelationship between the two activities, which was actually attempted herein, is also echoed in Strauss and Corbin’s (1990: 45) words, who mention that the process of data collection is controlled by the emerging theory, emphasising the role of the analyst who jointly collects, codes and analyses his/her data and decides what data to collect next in order to develop theory. Commenting on the process of coding and categorisation to generate theory, Chamaz (2006, found in Black, 2009: 86) points out: Grounded theory involves taking comparisons from data and reaching up to construct abstractions and then down to tie these abstractions to data. It means learning about the specific and the general – and seeing what is new in them – then exploring their links to larger issues or creating larger unrecognized issues in entirety. (Chamaz, 2006: 181) Similarly, Taylor and Bogdan (1998: 7–8, found in O’Donoghue, 2007: 58) hold, ‘a theory may be said to be grounded to the extent that it is derived from and based on the data themselves’. Previously, Lofland (1971) had referred to this kind of theorising as ‘emergent analysis’ because hypotheses are developed after the data are collected and thoroughly analysed. Grounded theory has its roots in the area of sociology using the approach of interviewing and this is very evident through Charmaz’s (2006: 130) words.23 She points out that priority is placed on the phenomena of study and that this approach sees ‘both data and analysis as created from the shared experiences of researcher and participants and the researcher’s relationships with participants’. However, its extensions in qualitative studies in general, are crucial.

Coding and coding scheme The (inductive) investigation of mediation strategies, which demanded maximum interpretational efforts, involved multiple stages, as already mentioned. Coding was a crucial part of the research24 and refers to the

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labelling of certain aspects of the data (Walsh, 2003: 253–254) and to their assignment to categories (Dey, 1993) thus enabling textual data organisation,25 analysis and understanding (cf. Basit, 2003). Below, the different phases of coding are presented and the overall research organisation towards the construction of the coding scheme or the inventory is discussed. According to Seidel and Kelle (1995), coding refers to noticing and identifying relevant phenomena, subdividing data by collecting instances of those phenomena and analysing them in order to uncover commonalities, differences, patterns and structures. Codes, which are defined as ‘tags or labels for allocating units of meaning to the descriptive or inferential information compiled during a study’ (Basit, 2003: 144), are attached to chunks of varying sized words, phrases, sentences or whole paragraphs, connected or unconnected to a specific setting. While Coffey and Atkinson (1996, found in Basit, 2003: 144) point out that codes are links between locations in the data which enable the researcher to go beyond the data, Charmaz (2006: 46) notes that they direct further data gathering. Similarly, codes, as stated by Seidel and Kelle (1995: 52), represent the decisive link between the original ‘raw data’ – that is, the textual material – and the researcher’s theoretical concepts. In this work, codes are considered to be synonymous with categories (i.e. the components of the model or the mediation strategies). Miles and Huberman (1984) explain: Codes are categories [...]. They are retrieval and organising devices that allow the analysis to spot quickly, pull out, and then cluster all the segments relating to the particular question, hypothesis, concept or theme. (Miles & Huberman, 1984: 66) The categories constructed through an inductive process comprise the coding scheme, which is ‘a statement of the features to be coded’ (O’Donnell, 1995: 120) and ‘the system network’ organising the coding features (O’Donnell, 1995: 121). The coding scheme constructed and used in this study has been the result of a long-lasting and complex process involving two different phases and multiple stages and the analysis of 653 written mediation scripts (52,950 words in total) produced by B1, B2 and C1 level candidates sitting for the Kratiko Pistopiitiko Glossomathias (KPG) English examinations (see Figure 5.1 for a schematic representation). Specifically, script/textual analysis was conducted in two distinct phases. While initially the main goal was the generation of a framework for the analysis which included a finite number of mediation strategies or

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• Analysis of a limited sample of scripts

(Pilot) Phase1

Coding scheme • Conceptualisation & generation of categories

•Analysis of the corpus

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Final Coding scheme • Evaluation& refinement of categories

Figure 5.1 Research method and phases

categories of analysis, or codes, with certain properties and dimensions, ultimately this framework was evaluated, refined and used for the purpose of locating mediation strategies in a much larger corpus (see Figure 5.1). The initially constructed scheme (Phase 1) took its final form and was validated during Phase 2. The procedure of model construction is briefly described in the following section.

Research phases and steps Phase 1 was initiated by deciding on the number of scripts to be examined. After selecting the scripts and preparing them for use (i.e. putting them in distinct documents and organising them) (see Step 1, Figure 5.2), I proceeded to carefully examine them (i.e. line-by-line reading of 27 B2 level scripts from May 2006 and November 2007) with the aim of discovering how source information is transferred in the target text and finally whether I could identify any strategies therein (Step 2). Careful reading of the data along with data interpretation which involved comparing patterns (Step 3) led to the creation of the first categorisation or typology of strategies which was developed after reducing large amounts of data and grouping similar items (Step 4). Ryan and Bernard (2003: 94) refer to this process of reducing data as ‘cutting and sorting’. Text segments which appeared to have similar characteristics were assigned to specific categories and the list of items was further reduced in the end when some segments could not be added to categories to which they had appeared to be relevant at the beginning. Then, the categories were named and defined in terms of their properties and dimensions (Step 5). Step 6 involved the process of breaking down, examining, comparing and classifying data (Stauss & Corbin, 1998: 102), i.e. grouping concepts

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STEP 1: Reviewing literature & Collecting data

STEP 2: Close examination of a sample of scripts & noticing

STEP 3: Data interpretation

STEP 4: Conceptualisation & Generating categories

STEP 5: Defining categories

STEP 6: Reforming & adding categories/Creating & defining subcategories

STEP 7: Further sampling & close examination

STEP 8: Refinement of the category system

STEP 9: Further sampling & close examination

STEP 10: Data interpretation

PILOT CODING SCHEME

Figure 5.2 Phase 1

according to their salient properties (i.e. for similarities and differences, and how relevant the properties of an incident compare dimensionally with others already identified). In order to ensure that the mediation strategy typology would serve as an effective and reliable means for eliciting mediation strategies, this classification was tested out in 13 more mediation scripts from another examination period (Step 7). This technique of testing the scheme in further samplings is what Huber and Gürtler (2004: 88) call ‘strategy of gradual differentiation’. Through this further sampling and its careful examination, old categories were again modified or merged and new categories emerged (Step 8). The reformed category system was tested out by re-examining another sample of scripts which had been produced in response to yet another different mediation task (Step 9). Data analysis and interpretation followed in order to consider any changes in the coding scheme (Step 10). In Phase 2, the process of tool validation commenced with the collection and grouping of scripts (Step 1, see Figure 5.3). The coding started with the first group of scripts (Step 2). In order to identify mediation strategies therein, the coding scheme I used was the scheme derived from the pilot script analysis. During the coding process, the need for some reformulations of the initially constructed scheme emerged as new subcategories had to be added while others had to be omitted (Step 3). I proceeded with the analysis of more scripts (Step 4). A few new subcategories emerged and they were added to the scheme (Step 5), which was later used for the analysis of scripts resulting from a different mediation task (Step 6). Before moving on to the analysis of the last batch

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STEP 1: Collecting data (600 scripts)

STEP 2: Locating strategies in 180 scripts (May 08)

STEP 3: Reforming the scheme

STEP 4: Locating strategies in 60 scripts (Nov 08)

STEP 5: Adding new subcategories

STEP 6: Locating strategies in 180 scripts (May 09)

STEP 7: Adding new subcategories

STEP 8: Locating strategies in 180 scripts (May 10)

FINAL CODING SCHEME

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STEP 9: Relocating strategies in 600 scripts

Figure 5.3 Phase 2

of scripts (Step 8), the scheme was again reviewed but required only slight changes (Step 7). The last step involved the selective recoding or relocation of those mediation strategies which were linked to the new subcategories (Step 9). The coded segments were scrutinised on the basis of the final scheme which was ultimately tested in all scripts. The coding scheme at that point flowed in a logical manner and the scheme seemed ready to explain all possible cases. Using Strauss and Corbin’s words (1998: 136), all categories were considered ‘saturated’ as no further subcategories appeared. Analysis of a sizeable corpus of 600 scripts and strategy identification would not have been possible to such an extent if I had not used a specific software package, 26 namely NVivo 8, 27 which helped me get automated responses to the questions initially posed.28 However, it should be made clear that the texts were not annotated automatically by the software programme; instead, the annotation was done manually (using the tool) on the basis of the categories previously established. I use the term ‘annotation’ here in the way that Adolphs (2006: 23) refers to it. She states: ‘Analytical information that is added to a text is often referred to as “annotation”’ and moves to explain that ‘In the area of corpus linguistics, the process of annotation is closely related to the processes of “tagging” or “parsing” of texts’. Note that during Phase 1, no electronic software was used. NVivo is an electronic tool which ‘allows users to focus on language within the context of macro-level text unit relations, particularly at the sentence or paragraph level’ (Durian, 2002: 739). This makes NVivo a

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useful tool for looking at relations between spans of text or for uncovering any patterns within the data and for this reason it is specially designed for coding texts. ‘Coding in NVivo’ refers to the process of assigning value to specific words, phrases, sentences or longer parts of the texts on the basis of certain categories. In my NVivo project, what was coded as mediation strategies were units ranging from single words or simple phrases to longer text segments. Given the inductive nature of my research, my coding methods as previously described, ‘translated naturally into NVivo’ (Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003: 132) as the way that the software is designed permitted such an approach to data analysis. Specifically, new categories could be easily added, others could be removed, while others could be merged. Apart from facilitating the coding process, NVivo also helped me to quantify and organise my results. As a matter of fact, NVivo and other computerised tagging programmes are largely used in qualitative research of a similar nature which aims at understanding L2 writing. As Grant and Ginther (2000: 123) maintain, taggers have been employed to describe differences between spoken and written texts as evidenced by the co-occurrence of particular linguistic features. These features, in combination with general text characteristics (such as text length, average word length and use of diverse vocabulary), have shed light on a number of dimensions of language use (Biber, 1988/1991/1995, 1986).

Scheme characteristics The model described in the previous section (see Table 5.1) ‘summarises the raw data and conveys key themes and processes’ (Thomas, 2006: 240). Its components (i.e. categories or mediation strategies) reflect the data, meaning that they were not ‘imposed upon the data arbitrarily’ (Dey, 1993: 104). The model has also been the result of a cyclic and iterative procedure. The procedure was ‘cyclic’ because it involved moving from data collection and analysis to framework construction and then going back again to data analysis. Data analysis, interpretation and collection were, in other words, mutually dependent. The simultaneous involvement in data collection and analysis has been proposed by Glaser and Strauss (1967/2006) as one of the defining characteristics of grounded theory.29 The process of constructing the model can also be described as ‘iterative’ because it involved repeated returns to earlier stages of the analysis or repeated movement back and forth between raw data and explanations that emerged (Dey, 1993: 239). Theory and model development was advanced during each step of data collection and analysis, meaning that

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the structure and content of the model were modified as the process of theorising and reflection progressed. The model offers a theoretical portrayal of the studied mediation outcomes employing interpretative methodology, which enables the understanding of relationships among various segments of data investigated (Rabinovich & Kacen, 2010: 608). Moreover, it is worth noting that the model is not overly generic. In deciding on the components of the scheme, my intention was not to create very abstract categories, but to construct a model which would be general enough to be applicable to any written mediation text and specific enough to take into account as many mediation strategies as possible. Another feature of the model is that it has not been the result of a prescriptive analysis or an inter-language comparison which would aim at discovering the extent to which there is equivalence between the source and the target text in terms of the linguistic features found therein. The model focuses on the mediatory use of language and in what cases it is successful. Text analysis has been conducted multidimensionally, rather than focusing on one level – e.g. sentence level – because mediation strategies occur at multiple levels. The model has also resulted from a qualitative analysis which intended to reveal commonalities or patterns. However, it ultimately facilitated the quantification of the results. Lastly, it has been tested for its trustworthiness by conducting validity tests on data obtained from multiple subcorpora. As far as the characteristics of the categories are concerned, all have been given a name or, as Lincoln and Guba (1985, found in Thomas, 2006: 243) put it, ‘a label’. The name given to the categories is usually short and is conveyed through the use of a word or a short phrase. Although the meaning of the label attributed usually reflects the specific characteristics of the category, as Strauss and Corbin (1998: 147) point out, the categories were sufficiently abstract to not ‘lose their sensitizing aspect’ (Glaser & Strauss, 2006: 242). This abstractness, however, should not be excessive since in such a case the scheme could not function as a guide relevant to mediation outcomes. In this regard, every attempt was made to ensure that the scheme would be as general as needed so as to be flexible enough to account for a variety of different mediation products and ‘to be readily reformulated when it does not work in application’ (Glaser & Strauss, 2006). All categories are embedded in the category system or model, which is a framework of analysis consisting of multiple levels. Using Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) words, each category has links or relationships with other categories on the same level and is also part of a hierarchical category

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system (e.g. a tree diagram). As in the model devised and used in this work, these links seem to indicate superordinate, parallel and subordinate categories (e.g. ‘parent, sibling’ or ‘child’ relationships). Of course, given the inductive approach to their development, all categories, which constitute the end products of the analysis, are associated with specific bits of data or actual extracts coded into a particular category (cf. Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Using the coding scheme to locate strategies: A useful guide for future research The detection of the mediation strategies included in the scheme has been conducted by following a specific course of action rather than by simply reading the script and then locating any strategy found therein in a random way. The process of locating is top-down moving from the text as a whole to more specific sentence-based linguistic choices. Specifically, as shown in Figure 5.4, the model is composed of two basic circles, each one corresponding to a specific group of strategies. The first circle includes Type A strategies, with which I initiated my analysis, while Type B strategies are included in the second circle. The fact that the latter are not included in a separate circle indicates the move from global strategies (e.g. blending textual and extra-textual information creatively, combining information selectively extracted from text [synthesising], reorganising/regrouping information and summarising) to more sentencebased strategies, such as paraphrasing, expanding and condensing. The signalling of text level as opposed to sentence level only appears in the Type A strategies as Type A strategies are the only strategies that can occur at these two levels. Type B strategies, on the contrary, only occur at the level of sentence. Type A and Type B strategies are purposefully connected since they can occur simultaneously, meaning that they are not mutually exclusive. In other words, as already explained earlier in this chapter, a unit of text may be assigned to more than one category simultaneously only when the two categories are of different types. That means that we may find instances of language use in which reorganisation (a Type A strategy) and paraphrasing (a Type B strategy) may occur simultaneously. I would like to point out several things about the location of specific strategies. As regards the summarising strategy, given that by nature it presupposes the use of paraphrasing, instances of syntactic or word-level reformulations occurring for the purpose of transferring the gist were not

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Figure 5.4 Schematic representation of the model

examined separately as instances of paraphrasing nor were they counted as such. Besides, in some cases it was difficult to distinguish how the summarised segments in the target text differed from those in the source text, or even to determine which parts of the source text related to the target texts. In addition, instances of paraphrasing occurring at the level of sentence were located at the final step in the coding process. In other words, when the rest of the strategies did not appear in a given script, the last decision I had to make was to check whether paraphrasing occurred, and the process of deciding whether an item was an instance of syntactic-, phrasal- or word-level paraphrasing was not always easy. My basic rule when locating instances of paraphrasing was that the starting point should be the source word which seemed to be differently realised linguistically in the target text. If this source word retained its status in the target text (in other words, continued to be a word or was transferred as a phrase) then the type of paraphrasing was word level. When the unit of analysis was the source phrase, which may have been transferred as a phrase or changed into a word, then the paraphrasing occurred above the level of word, and the

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segment was coded for phrase-level paraphrasing. Finally, when the unit of analysis was neither a source phrase nor a source word, but rather a clause or a sentence, it was examined to determine whether paraphrasing at the level of syntax occurred. When there were instances of source information rearrangement for the sake of paraphrasing, these were not considered as instances of reorganisation as already mentioned, but were counted as paraphrased instances of language use.

Assessing trustworthiness of the scheme As discussed in this chapter, the particular analysis used in the development of the model can be characterised as ‘interpretative’ in nature (Davies, 1995). This means that category identification did not produce a unique solution, as Ryan and Bernard (2003: 103) put it, which is actually the case in qualitative research projects. On the same issue, Dey (1993) characteristically mentions that there is no single set of categories waiting to be discovered. There are as many ways of ‘seeing’ the data as one can invent. Any distinction has to be considered in relation to the purpose for which it is drawn. With respect to that purpose, it may be more or less useful, but one distinction cannot be considered more or less valid than another independently of the reasons why it is made. (Dey, 1993: 117) The categories for this project have been inductively generated on the basis of my interpretations of evidence collected through the process of analysing corpora as well as on my prior theoretical understanding of the phenomenon. Given the interpretative nature of the analysis, a serious attempt has been made to ensure the validity and trustworthiness of the model by following a very specific course of action. The validation of the coding scheme, first of all, has been achieved through multiple readings and analyses of the data and interpretations have emerged through careful examination of the metadata derived from this analysis (i.e. information about the category, the sources and other characteristics of the coded text segments). The selective sampling conducted at the second phase of the project provided an opportunity not only to enrich the category set but also to validate it (Goldkuhl & Cronholm, 2010: 190), improving my understanding of the characteristics of the mediation product. Credibility along with dependability, transferability and confirmability, which were catered for and are discussed in the following text, have been

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suggested by Lincoln and Guba (1985) for assessing the trustworthiness of qualitative research (see also Shenton, 2004). Credibility has been ensured through analytical coding definitions, long-term and active engagement in the field, persistent observation, checking interpretations against raw data (Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009: 311) and generally ample documentation of data analysis (Pries-Heje, 1992: 129), while transparency (cf. Auerbach & Silverstein, 2003; Pries-Heje, 1992) has been maintained through clear coding procedures as previously described. As a matter of fact, transparency, in this study, has been achieved through the presentation of the exact steps followed towards the construction of the coding scheme. In addition, ‘traceability’ (cf. Goldkuhl & Cronholm, 2010; Pries-Heje, 1992) has been ensured via the direct link of the data, which generated the theory (i.e. the categories along with their properties). An attempt has also been made to provide justifiable interpretations not only by means of transparency but also transferability, which refers to the use of the coding scheme as a guide for coding a new sample every time the coding of a previous sample had been completed and any relevant reformulations of the scheme had subsequently been done. For the purposes of this research, multiple samples were employed at different stages, providing evidence for the occurrence of the strategies. Describing in detail the research design and its implementation (i.e. what was planned and executed on a strategic level and why), providing the operational details of data gathering, addressing the minutiae of what has been done in the field and constantly assessing the effectiveness of the process of inquiry undertaken (reflective appraisal of the project) (Shenton, 2004: 71) are some of the methodological strategies followed in order to enhance dependability. Commenting on the issue of dependability and how it can be achieved, the following claims by Shenton (2004) are echoed in this study: In order to address the dependability issue more directly, the processes within the study should be reported in detail, thereby enabling a future researcher to repeat the work, if not necessarily to gain the same results. Thus, the research design may be viewed as a ‘prototype model’. Such in-depth coverage also allows the reader to assess the extent to which proper research practices have been followed. (Shenton, 2004: 171) Confirmability is finally ensured by checking the internal coherence of the research product (see Phase 2, last step), namely, the data, the coded references and the interpretations becoming available to the researcher

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through notes, memos and the coding manual (cf. Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009) which includes the definitions provided for each strategy along with their properties. In addition to this, as Shenton (2004: 72) points out, detailed methodological description also ensures confirmability because it enables the reader to ‘determine how far the data and constructs emerging from it, may be accepted’. This chapter has attempted to illustrate how data were gathered and processed, describing each methodological step in detail. This (data-oriented) approach of showing ‘how the data eventually leading to the formation of recommendations was gathered and processed during the course of the study’ is what Shenton (2004) calls an ‘audit trail’.

Conclusion The present chapter has presented the IMS derived from an inductive approach to data analysis, one which relates theory and method and which allows the researcher ‘to communicate and connect with the data’ (Basit, 2003: 152). This chapter has also delineated the methodology followed towards the exploration of strategies and has discussed the means by which they were located in corpora comprised of texts produced as a result of mediation tasks (cf. Stathopoulou, 2012b, 2014b). Data collecting, careful reading of the data, categorising, comparing properties of categories and reformulating categories are by and large the stages towards the development of the inductively derived explanatory model from the data. It has been shown that the process of framework generation has been both ‘hierarchical’ and ‘recursive’ (Morse & Field, 1995: 157, found in Eaves, 2001: 655) as it entailed systematic categorisation of data and limited theorising until patterns in the data emerged. Chapters 6 and 7 present the results of mediation strategy detection on the basis of the coding scheme presented herein. Quantification of findings has been conducted in order to discuss the degree to which certain features related to the task (i.e. type of task and proficiency level for which it is designed) play a role in mediation strategy use. The numerical data have been complemented with qualitative data, which are also discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.

Notes (1) (2)

The tasks which triggered the mediation texts (from which the examples have been drawn) are included in Appendix 1. In reading data, as Dey (1993: 91) puts it, there is always the need to shift our focus between levels within the data, moving from the general to the more specific and vice versa.

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(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7) (8) (9)

(10) (11)

(12)

(13)

(14) (15) (16)

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Commenting on deductiveness, Thomas (2006: 238) points out that ‘in deductive analyses, such as those used in experimental and hypothesis testing research, key themes are often obscured, reframed, or left invisible because of the preconceptions in the data collection and data analysis procedures imposed by investigators’. For a typology of test-wiseness strategies developed for the purpose of constructing a KPG-exam-oriented syllabus, see Nikaki (2009). For research concerning the investigation of reading test-taking strategies, see Stathopoulou and Nikaki (2009a, 2009b) and Dendrinos and Stathopoulou (2009). Type A strategies concern the relaying of both verbal and numerical information. The fact that there are tasks which require the rendering of numerical information (which may be presented in tables, charts, etc.) into a verbal text accounts for my decision to include some additional strategies relevant to this sort of relaying. Source text (ST) in Greek: To HAIRSPRAY είναι μια κωμωδία που μας μεταφέρει στη δεκαετία του 60, με τα περίεργα χτενίσματα, τα πολύχρωμα ρούχα, τα hits και την τρέλα της εποχής. Σε αυτό το περιβάλλον, μια χοντρούλα προσπαθεί να βρει το δρόμο προς τη διασημότητα… ‘Synthesising’ is an alternative term used for this strategy. ST in Greek: Διατροφή: Η Ε.Ο.Ε. παρέχει βασικά είδη διατροφής. Μετακίνηση: Τα έξοδα μετακίνησης από και προς την Ερμούπολη καλύπτονται από τον εθελοντή. ST in Greek: Πείτε σε φίλους, συγγενείς και συναδέλφους ότι πρόκειται να το κόψετε και ότι έχετε ανάγκη την υποστήριξή τους. Ζητήστε τους να μην καπνίζουν μπροστά σας ή να αφήνουν τσιγάρα σε... κοινή θέα. […] Σήμερα, κυκλοφορούν θεραπείες κατά του τσιγάρου (τσίχλες ή διαδερμικά αυτοκόλλητα νικοτίνης). Summarisation and main idea selection have also been regarded as a learning strategy in specific subject matters such as science (cf. Leopold & Leutner, 2011). ST in Greek: Στη θαυμάσια αυτή ταινία, με τίτλο Ρατατούη ο πρωταγωνιστής είναι ο Ρεμί, ένας αρουραίος που λατρεύει την καλή κουζίνα. Όταν τον διώχνουν από το σπίτι του, για καλή του τύχη καταλήγει στον υπόνομο κάτω από ένα πολυτελέστατο παριζιάνικο εστιατόριο. Η αγάπη του για το καλό φαγητό θα τον οδηγήσουν στο δικό του παράδεισο, που δεν είναι άλλος από την... κουζίνα. Εκεί θα γνωρίσει τον Λιγκουΐνι, έναν φιλόδοξο νεαρό σερβιτόρο… ST in Greek: Στο Spiderman 3, ο Σπάιντερμαν χαίρεται την ηρεμία του και κάνει σχέδια να πα ντρευτεί την αγαπημένη του, η οποία όμως αντιμετωπίζει προβλήματα που θα την κά νουν να απομακρυνθεί –κάτι που επιδρά αρνητικά επάνω του. Ως προς την πραγματική δράση ένας νέος εχθρός ονόματι Sandman εμφανίζεται και μια μαύρη ουσία κυριεύει την ψυχή του Σπάιντερμαν… ST in Greek: Στο HAPPY FEET ο μικρός Mumble είναι ένας πιγκουίνος αλλιώτικος από τους άλλους. Ενώ θα έπρεπε να διαθέτει όμορφη και ρυθμική φωνή, αυτός γεννήθηκε χορεύοντας κλακέτες! Οι γονείς του φοβούνται πως δε θα καταφέρει ποτέ να βρει την αληθινή αγάπη χωρίς να ξέρει το ‘Τραγούδι της Καρδιάς’, ενώ οι συμμαθητές του τον κοροϊδεύουν λόγω της ιδιαιτερότητάς του. ST in Greek: Ενημέρωση και ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού, κατοίκων και επισκεπτών, σχετικά με τα πουλιά του Αιγαίου, τη σημαντική φυσική κληρονομιά της Σύρου, τη φύση και την αξία των μικρών νησίδων και των προστατευόμενων περιοχών. Splitting a sentence into two, more simple sentences is seen as a case of paraphrasing by Dorr et al. (2004) and Boonthum (2004). ST in Greek: Ενημέρωση και ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού, κατοίκων και επισκεπτών, σχετικά με τα πουλιά του Αιγαίου, τη σημαντική φυσική κληρονομιά της Σύρου, τη φύση και την αξία των μικρών νησίδων και των προστατευόμενων περιοχών.

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(17) ST in Greek: Να φροντίζετε να μην παίρνετε τις έγνοιες στο κρεβάτι μαζί σας. (18) ST in Greek: Πείτε σε φίλους, συγγενείς και συναδέλφους ότι πρόκειται να το κόψετε και ότι έχετε ανάγκη την υποστήριξή τους. Ζητήστε τους να μην καπνίζουν μπροστά σας ή να αφήνουν τσιγάρα σε... κοινή θέα. (19) Examples of phrasal paraphrasing can be found in Barreiro (2008: 31). (20) ‘Transposition’ is a term used in translation studies to refer to the change in word class. (21) For a relevant study, see also Ferris (1994). (22) For an overview of the growing field of the integration of qualitative evidence, see Major and Savin-Baden (2011). (23) Strauss and Corbin (1990: 2) refer to the discovery of theory from data systematically obtained from social research. (24) In this book, the term ‘coding’ is used interchangeably with ‘tagging’. (25) It is characteristic that Tesch (1990) considers the establishment of new categories as an organising tool. (26) The increasing use of computer-assisted analysis of qualitative data has been discussed by Basit (2003), DeNardo and Levers (2002), Jones (2007) and Kaczynski (2004) among others. (27) NVivo is the latest version of NUD-IST, a programme originally created in 1991 by Tom and Lyn Richards and ‘is designed to allow users to conduct sophisticated analyses of electronic text data contextually’ (Durian, 2002: 739). As stated by Jones (2007: 71), the main purpose of NUD-IST was to assist researchers in the retrieval of text from data, allow them to code data and to develop a system of relating codes to each other using a tree structure. (28) For a more detailed presentation of what the particular tool may offer to the user, see Jones (2007). (29) Other such characteristics are advancing theory development through every step of data collection and analysis and using a comparative method during each step of data analysis, among others. For further elaboration on these, see Charmaz (2006: 5).

6 Mediation Strategy Use and Task Type Introduction Once the mediation strategies were identified in the corpus of scripts as a result of mediation tasks,1 what followed was a statistical analysis of the metadata derived from this identification procedure. The results were quantified with a view to exploring which mediation strategies, triggered by specific tasks, lead to successful mediation performance at different levels of proficiency and to what extent mediation strategy use is dependent on task requirements. The quantitative analysis of successful mediation strategies, part of which is presented in this chapter (see also Stathopoulou, in press, a), was twofold. It actually involved the investigation of the most and least popular strategies by specifically looking at the variables of task, proficiency level and performance with the intent to discover what strategies were related to what script characteristics (i.e. as a result of which task or what proficiency level). The next step in the statistical processing was to count the number of occurrences of each mediation strategy with a view to examining whether the frequencies were dependent on the task at hand and the performance. 2 This chapter focuses on one aspect of the quantitative analysis for the purposes of the particular research and presents the results derived from the quantitative analysis of texts as a result of mediation with the ultimate aim to discover to what extent task type affects mediation strategy use. What is shown is that both the linguistic and mediatory requirements of tasks are crucial in influencing the popularity and the variety of mediation strategies in texts. A very important distinction that has already been discussed in Chapter 4 and has proved useful for the discussion of the results is the distinction between summarisation and picking-up-information tasks. As already explained, mediation tasks (either written or oral) are classified into: (a) those requiring the production of a summary representing the condensing of information which reflects the gist of the source text 133

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and (b) those requiring the selection or picking up of information found in different parts of the source text; this information is then regrouped into the target text depending on the communicative goal set by the task. This distinction, which is based on the mediatory requirements of the tasks, becomes relevant when analysing the numerical metadata as it seems that different types of tasks are linked to different mediation strategies. Finally, another important distinction that is used for the analysis and interpretation of data is the distinction between Type A and Type B strategies (see Chapter 5) as their use also seems to be linked to the type of task at hand.

Mediation Strategy Use and Task Requirements The examination of mediation performance through the textual analysis of scripts has enabled an understanding of how task parameters (i.e. the linguistic and the mediatory features of the tasks) affect mediation strategies and which strategies are linked to which tasks at different levels of proficiency. The importance of task features, text difficulty at a conceptual or linguistic level and other task-related variables in determining strategy use has been confirmed by numerous other studies (cf. Alexander et al., 1998; Brantmeier, 2002; Esmaeili, 2002; Plakans, 2009a, 2009b). According to Asención Delaney (2008: 141), task features (i.e. the nature of the topic, the number and the nature of the sources used and the writing conventions required) determine the learners’ performance in such tasks. Commenting on a specific type of task (i.e. the reading-to-write tasks), Asención Delaney (2008) points out that the fact that there is a myriad of reading-to-write tasks representing different degrees of cognitive complexity and perceived difficulty points to the notion that the reading-to-write construct cannot be conceived as a unitary ability, but rather as a dynamic ability that interacts with task demands and individual factors. (Asención Delaney, 2008: 147) Specifically, my analysis has shown that the variable of task seems to be one of the primary factors affecting mediation strategy use in particular and mediation performance in general. Type A strategies (without being combined with Type B), which are usually employed to make certain information prominent, to emphasise certain key points or to make explicit and establish connections between ideas, etc., are mainly spotted in scripts that have resulted from picking-up-information tasks (i.e. tasks

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asking for the selection and relaying of information found in different parts of the source text). This finding (see Appendix 2.1) implies that this sort of task does not seem to trigger strategies of textual borrowing such as paraphrasing, expanding and condensing, i.e. strategies mainly used with the intent to avoid prolixity and repetition of the source information. The combination, however, of Type A and Type B strategies appears in more scripts requiring summarising. This task type seems to trigger the use of a greater variety of strategies thus making it more demanding in terms of their mediatory requirements. Note that while Type A strategies concern the level of ideas and are described as information based, Type B strategies focus more on language aspects. Their combination surely demands sophisticated skills on the part of the mediator who has to be ‘mature’ enough with the target language in order to successfully handle source text information and linguistically incorporate it into the target environment. The high incidence of Type A strategies (without being combined with any of the Type B strategies) in scripts as a result of picking-up-information tasks, raises an important issue related to the mediatory requirements of the tasks. Actually, the fact that we observe more Type A strategies in scripts as a result of picking-up-information tasks leads us to conclude that these sorts of tasks seem to require the use of a range of Type A strategies exclusively, rather than a combination of Type A and Type B strategies. This becomes more evident if we consider the mediation tasks which require summarising. In that case, it seems that there is no need to use Type A strategies other than summarisation, as this particular strategy by definition encompasses reordering or regrouping of information found in different parts of the source text. Moving on to further findings which demonstrate the interrelationship between task characteristics and specific mediation strategies, Table 6.1 depicts the distribution of Type A and Type B strategies along with the parallel use of both strategy types across the tasks analysed. At this point, a crucial question that the quantitative analysis seeks to answer is: Which mediation tasks with which characteristics trigger specific strategies? This question is answered below (see also Appendices 2.2 and 2.3). The highest percentage of scripts (98.3%) in which both Type A and Type B strategies occur has been observed in the 2010 C1 level task, while in many scripts (90%) responding to the 2008 B2 task, both Type A and Type B strategies seem to occur. The C1 level task requires candidates to write a letter to the readers’ column of a magazine in which they share with other readers their personal experience of trying to quit smoking and explain what they did in order to quit (see Appendix 1.2, Task C1.3).

Mediation task

2008B1 2008B2 2008C1 2009B1 2009B2 2009C1 2010B1 2010B2 2010C1

Strategy type

0 1 7 0 1 0 6 17 0

Count 0.0 1.7 11.7 0.0 1.7 0.0 10.0 28.3 0.0

% of scripts

Type A 30 4 2 30 15 10 5 7 1

Count 50.0 6.7 3.3 50.0 25.0 16.7 8.3 11.7 1.7

% of scripts

Type B

Table 6.1 Type A and Type B mediation strategies: The task variable

30 54 50 30 44 50 48 28 59

Count 50.0 90.0 83.3 50.0 73.3 83.3 80.0 46.7 98.3

% of scripts

Type A and B 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 8 0

Count

0.0 1.7 1.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.7 13.3 0.0

% of scripts

None

136 Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing

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In terms of its mediatory requirements, it is a task which requires the summarisation of information rather than picking up points from different parts. The B2 level task (2008B2), triggering the production of scripts which also include a high percentage of both Type A and Type B strategies, asks candidates to produce a text for a guide recommending two films for children and two for teenagers, with the text including a brief account of the film (see Appendix 1.2, Task B2.1). This is also a mediation task requiring the relaying of the gist. In fact, they both call for summarising. In terms of their linguistic characteristics, the common feature that both tasks share is the generic process which is to narrate and describe. In contrast, the lowest number of scripts (46.7%) in which the combination of Type A and Type B strategies occurs, is related to the 2010 B2 task, while the same task seems to trigger the appearance of more Type A strategies (without being combined with Type B strategies). This is natural if we consider the nature of the particular task, which, apart from the relaying of verbal information, also demands the relaying of numerical information into a verbal text, a task feature which limits the use of paraphrasing strategies in particular, or Type B strategies in general. Type B strategies, in other words, are marginally used in this case as much of the source information is numerical and cannot undergo any syntactic, phrasal or lexical modifications. In addition, as regards the same task, a high number of scripts (13.3%) do not contain any strategy compared to the results for the other tasks (the percentages of which range from 1.7% to 0%). The relaying of numerical information (rather than verbal information) accounts for this finding. Another interesting finding, which becomes evident through Table 6.1, is related to the 2008 B1 task which triggers a low number of Type A and Type B mediation strategies (50% of the total number of scripts under investigation). In addition to this, the particular task is related to a very low number of Type B strategies (50%) and no Type A strategies. The particular task, which asks candidates to write an email to their friend, sharing their sleeping problem due to exam stress (see Appendix 1.2, Task B1.1), contains information in bulleted form, while there seems to be no need for the mediator to use summarising, reordering, combining or creative blending between new and extracted information (Type A strategies). In other words, it is not necessary for the mediator to make certain information more prominent or explicit, or to emphasise certain points. The task mainly calls for the use of Type B strategies, i.e. strategies which contribute to the effective linguistic adaptation of the source information so that it reads naturally in the target language and in the new linguistic environment (e.g. paraphrasing, condensing or expanding).

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It is also obvious from Table 6.1 that the occurrence of Type B strategies without being combined with Type A strategies is mainly related to B1 level tasks, a finding which gives an indication of the interrelationship between proficiency level and mediation strategy use. However, the level parameter will be thoroughly discussed in Chapter 7.

Type A Mediation Strategies Across Tasks This section moves a step further and focuses on Type A strategies, discussing their popularity in the corpus under consideration. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 present evidence in relation to the differentiated mediation strategy used across tasks. In Appendices 2.4 and 2.5, the reader can find numerical information about mediation strategies used in the most successful mediation scripts (i.e. fully satisfactory scripts).

Creative blending between extracted and extra-textual information Starting with creative blending between extracted and extra-textual information, what the analysis has shown, and is evident in Figure 6.1 (and in Appendices 2.2 and 2.3), is that there is a group of tasks with certain characteristics which seem to trigger (to a greater or lesser degree) this particular strategy (i.e. 2008C1, 2010C1, 2009B2 and 2009C1), and another set of tasks which do not trigger the extensive use of creative blending (i.e. 2009B1, 2010B1, 2008B1 and 2010B2). Specifically, apart from the proficiency level – as mainly C1 level tasks exhibit a pattern in relation to creative blending, what seems to beg for the use of this particular strategy is the opportunity that the task provides for the introduction of extra-textual Type A strategies

count of scripts

60

53

49

46

50 40

18 3

7

10 0 0

18 8 2

37

20 15 10 7 1 1

35

35

Creative blending

30

28 22

30 20

43

39

Combining 17

15

17

Summarizing 9

1

3 2

4 3

1 0

5

Reorganizing

2008B1 2008B2 2008C1 2009B1 2009B2 2009C1 2010B1 2010B2 2010C1

Figure 6.1 Type A mediation strategies in relation to tasks: Number of scripts

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information. Certain mediation tasks, in other words, leave some room for inserting new information (i.e. information not included in the source text) even though that is not explicitly stated in the task instructions. One such task is from the May 2010 examination period (2010C1) which requires candidates to not only use and relay source text information but also add their own experience about quitting smoking, thus providing candidates with the opportunity to mix inserted with extracted information, as actually seems to have happened. The mediation task (2008C1) which asks candidates to produce a letter making suggestions about what can be done to save the planet also leaves some room for inserting information even though this is not explicitly stated in the task instructions (see Appendix 1.2, Task C1.3). A qualitative examination of the scripts responding to this latter task has led us to conclude that the scripts include suggestions made available through the source text. Also, in many scripts, information has been inserted in order to elaborate on the extracted information. In much the same vein, the task which asks candidates to write to their friend in order to convince him/her to participate in a summer project on an island by using some hints provided by the task (2009B2), even though not explicitly stated, allows for the insertion of new information mainly because of its generic process which is to argue (see Appendix 1.2, Task B2.2). It seems that scripts responding to tasks whose generic process is argumentation cannot be based solely on the source text information, but require the insertion of new information in order to be successful. Note that the picture is almost the same when looking only at fully satisfactory scripts (see Appendix 2.4), a finding which seems to suggest that irrespective of whether the scripts are fully or moderately satisfactory, the room that the task leaves for the insertion of new information is what seems to determine the use of creative blending. Previously, it has been shown that the strategy of creative blending mainly occurs when the task requires the insertion of information (either directly or indirectly). However, the qualitative analysis of scripts has shown that the mixing of old and new information may also be successful in scripts that have resulted from tasks which do not necessarily require the introduction of extra-textual information. Example 1 is from a B1 level task which asks candidates to send an email to their friend in order to provide him/her with some advice on how to feel better (2010B1) (see Appendix 1.2, Task B1.3). According to the graphic displays (Figure 6.1 and Appendix 2.4), it is actually a task which does not trigger many occurrences of blending between extracted and extra-textual information. It seems that

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creative blending may occur successfully though, as shown in the following example. Information has been provided from real life (see phrase in italics) and was not included in the source text. (1) you should listen to a lot of music. As I can remember you used to play the guitar and by doing so often you’ll definitely feel better. [2010A_B1_30]

Combining of extracted information Overall, the high percentages of scripts not including the strategy of combining lead us to conclude that it is not a popular strategy (see also Appendix 2.3). The most important finding as regards this particular strategy is that its occurrence seems to be linked, among other things, to the organisation and structure of the source text. The source texts of the tasks associated with the highest number of scripts having this particular strategy (e.g. 2008C1, 2009B2) contain information which, though similar, is dispersed in different parts. Naturally, in the successful mediation scripts similar source information is pulled together or is creatively combined thus contributing to the overall text organisation. On the other hand, the task requiring the transferring of information from a text presenting, for instance, the plot of several films in a linear order (e.g. 2008B2), does not seem to trigger the combining of extracted information due to the way that the source information is presented (i.e. linearly) and is required to be presented (again linearly) in the target text. As a matter of fact, this mediation task mainly triggers the strategy of summarising as it calls for transferring the gist of important information. In fully satisfactory scripts (see Appendix 2.4), the total distribution of combining across tasks does not differentiate, supporting the finding that task variables seem to greatly affect the use of combining.

Summarising In relation to the strategy of summarising, ‘continuous’ source texts (e.g. 2008B2, 2010B1 and 2008C1) as opposed to bulleted ones (e.g. 2008B1, 2009B1 and 2009B2) seem to favour this particular strategy. Careful examination of the results leads us to draw the conclusion that when information is already provided in a condensed form, as is the case with bulleted texts, there is no need for summarising. Interestingly enough, in the fully satisfactory texts sampled (see Appendix 2.4), the strategy of summarising does not demonstrate the same patterns

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of occurrence. In order to illustrate the degree to which the source text exerts a regulatory force over the target text (which ultimately summarises the former), some examples from two different subcorpora are provided below. The first example is a response to a B1 level task requiring the production of an email message which informs about the Mediterranean diet (2009B1, see Appendix 1.2, Task B1.2) while the remaining examples are responses to a C1 level task requiring the production of a report on how Greek beaches managed to win Blue Flag status (2009C1, see Appendix 1.2, Task C1.2). In Example 2, the Greek source text appears to regulate the target text in the sense that the organisational pattern of the script resembles that of the Greek text. In other words, the topic sentence, which has been extracted, refers to a single piece of source information. Specifically, in the Greek text, this piece of information introduces the whole theme (the Greek topic sentence is: Ο όρος «Μεσογειακή διατροφή» αναφέρεται στον τρόπο που τρέφονται και που ζουν οι λαοί της Μεσογείου/‘Mediterranean diet’ refers to the way Mediterranean people eat and live). (2) The Mediterranean diet is the way people who live near the Mediterranean sea eat. It’s a realy healthy way of life. You shouldn’t eat red meat, butter, salt, candies or sodas more than a few times in a month. It’s also better to use honey than sugar. Everyday eat in small quantities dairy products. You should have fish or chicken no more than 2 (two) times a week, just like nuts and beans. Eat many fruits and vegetables just like olive oil. Eggs should be in your diet four or less times a week. And don’t forget, prefere the brown bread and do daily exercise. [2009A_B1_6] Examples 3 and 4 are the result of a C1 level task, the source text of which starts with some general information about what the Blue Flag programme is and how a country can obtain it.3 The source text is organised in such a way that its organisational pattern seems to be easily transferred in the target text. The topic sentence produced is similar to that of the source text in terms of the meaning conveyed, setting the context and preparing the reader for what will follow. However, the only difference from the B1 level example (Example 2) is that, in these C1 level examples, the meaning conveyed via the introductory sentences (italicised) is not directly expressed in the source text and has thus been inserted by the mediators. Note that the majority of instances of topic sentence insertion accompanying the summarised messages have been found in scripts as a result of this particular task.

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(3) The “Blue Flag” programme provides a warranty for organised beaches and marines that should be kept clean and safe. It is a symbol of quality for almost 40 countries. Due to its strict criterias, the institutions that handle these areas have to comply with them. In Greece, 40 beaches and 8 marines have already won the prize. [2009A_C1_15] (4) Greek beaches are also fully organised and protected. Checkings on a regular basis, prove that there is high quality in swimming water. Not only does the beach gets cleaned from garbage but there are also hygiene departments and recycling stores. Apart form forbidding driving on the beach, a safe route, especially for people in need, to reach the waters is designed and constructed. Finally, professional life-guards are present in case of an accident or a danger in sea. [2009A_C1_23] The same task seems to impose the insertion of concluding statements (italicised), as shown in Examples 5 and 6. (5) According to the internationally acknowledged “blue flag programme” Greece got four hundred and thirty (430) prized beaches and eight (8) prized marines. Our country fullfiled the vast majority of the criteria needed for the obtaining the “blue flags”. [2009A_C1_22] (6) “Blue Flag” programme in Greece has been a very successful one among many others. As you already know the “Blue Flag” is a symbol of quality for organised beaches and marines. Here in Greece we are all so pround to mention that during 2008, 430 beaches and 8 marins have won the “Blue Flag” trophy. This fact is not just a simple achievement. [2009A_C1_14] With regard to the insertion of a concluding statement, there is evidence that the C1 level task of May 2010, which required candidates to write a letter to a magazine with a view to relating their experience of how they quit smoking, led to the summarisation of source meanings accompanied by a general concluding statement referring to their personal experience, shown in Example 7 (italicised). This insertion has become evident in the majority of scripts which transfer the essential and relevant propositions from a source text to a target text in a condensed form. (7) To begin with, a good start is half the battle. Smokers should set a particular date when they are going to start their attempt, as well

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as take some drastic measures as for removing astrays from their common places and forbid smoking in their homes. It seems to me that this helped me much more. [2010A_C1_10] Shifting our attention to the discussion of what tasks trigger the high use of summarising, it seems that, apart from those tasks affecting the target text in terms of the organisational pattern of the source text, there are some other tasks whose mediatory requirements seem to be related to the high use of this particular strategy. Specifically, as regards the two C1 level tasks described above (i.e. 2009C1 and 2010C1), the overall meaning of the source text must be condensed; therefore, the strategy of summarising appears to be unavoidable. In both cases, the source texts included information which had to be summarised by the candidates in order to respond to the task. Another task which is also linked to a high number of scripts in which this particular strategy is much evidenced is the task requiring the transferring of numerical into verbal information (2010B2). In this latter case, what has been summarised is the introductory text accompanying the numerical information.

Reorganising Overall, the strategy of reorganising does not seem to be popular in the corpus sampled. The majority of scripts making use of reorganising (18 out of 60) have resulted from the B2 level task requiring the production of a text for a guide recommending films for children and teenagers (see Appendix 1.2, Task B2.1). The source text is divided into four parts, the first two corresponding to the two films for teenagers while the other two correspond to the films for children. As script analysis has demonstrated, the target texts seem to include the same information but ordered differently, starting with the films for children and ending with the films for teenagers. The fact that task rubrics clearly state that candidates have to recommend films for children and for teenagers (while the source text starts with the films for the teenagers) may account for the high incidence of reorganising in the scripts as a result of the particular task. In the subcorpus of fully satisfactory scripts (see Appendix 2.4), the total distribution of reorganising across tasks is no different from that in the total bulk of scripts, again supporting the finding that task variables are those which seem to heavily affect mediation strategy use.

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Type B Mediation Strategies Across Tasks Moving to Type B strategies and examining the degree of their popularity in relation to task characteristics and requirements (see Figure 6.2), the most striking finding is associated with the strategy of paraphrasing (i.e. syntactic, phrasal and word-level paraphrasing) which actually seems to occur in almost all scripts under investigation (i.e. in 95.6% of B1 scripts, 83.9% of B2 scripts and 95.6% of C1 scripts). The lowest number of scripts including paraphrasing (i.e. 34 out of 60) have been produced as a result of the task (2010B2) requiring the relaying of numerical into verbal information, a finding which also reinforces the assumption that task characteristics play a determining factor in mediation strategy use. Numerical information depicted as a figure, as was the case in this task, could not be paraphrased. Figure 6.2 also illustrates that the C1 level task (2010C1) asking candidates to write a letter to the readers of a magazine column sharing their experience of trying to quit smoking and explain what they did in order to quit, seems to trigger the highest use of expanding (found in 18 out of 60 scripts) and condensing (detected in 9 scripts). Both strategies are not popular in the scripts as a result of the May 2010 B2 level task which, as already mentioned, requires the production of an article which will present the findings of a survey thus transferring numerical information into verbal information. An examination of the results derived from the analysis of the subcorpus of fully satisfactory scripts (see Appendix 2.5) led us to conclude that while paraphrasing is the most popular strategy there as well, the number of excellent scripts including expanding decreases (if compared to the number corresponding to the totality of scripts). Expanding thus does not seem to correlate with high performance. Type B mediation strategies 60 0

count of scripts

60

58

60

59

60

60 52

52

50

Expanding 34

40 30

10 0

Condensing

18

20

12 5

2

2

4

8

6 0

0

0

20

5

9 1

10

Paraphrasing

2008B1 2008B2 2008C1 2009B1 2009B2 2009C1 2010B1 2010B2 2010C1

Figure 6.2 Type B mediation strategies in relation to tasks: Number of scripts

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145

Overall, in my corpus, the most popular Type A strategies seem to be the strategies of summarising and creative blending between extracted and extra-textual information, whereas the least popular is reorganising, probably because the reordering of information may also occur by means of a different strategy (i.e. summarising which by its nature involves some sort of information reorganisation) and is thus not counted as reorganising.

Concluding Remarks Drawing its data from an examination system (i.e. KPG) aligned to the descriptors provided by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning, Assessment (CEFR), this study has provided evidence which confirms that mediation performance is task specific, thus stressing the prominent role of tasks in mediation strategy use. In other words, the variable of task type seems to be one of the primary factors affecting mediation strategy use in particular. The findings in relation to the degree to which task types affect mediation strategy use are summarised as follows: •

•

Type A strategies (without being combined with Type B) are mainly found in scripts having resulted from picking-up-information tasks. This means that this sort of task does not seem to trigger strategies of textual borrowing such as paraphrasing, expanding and condensing. The combination, however, of Type A and Type B strategies appears in more scripts requiring summarising. This sort of task seems to trigger the use of a variety of strategies thus making them more demanding in terms of their mediatory requirements.

Certain general conclusions, which have been drawn in relation to task features, also concern the crucial role of the source text from which information has been transferred on the basis of task rubrics. In a nutshell, it has been found that what seems to trigger the use of the strategy of creative blending between new and old information is the room that the task leaves for the introduction of extra-textual information. The occurrence of the combining of extracted information and reorganising seems to be linked to the structure and organisation of the source text. The source texts of the tasks associated with the highest number of scripts including the particular strategies (i.e. combining and reorganising) contained information which, though similar, was dispersed in different parts. Additionally, continuous Greek texts as opposed to bulleted texts

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seem to favour the strategy of summarising. Although paraphrasing is the most popular strategy, it is not detected much in scripts as a result of tasks requiring the relaying of numerical information. While this chapter has given insights into the variable of task in the light of findings derived from the statistical analysis, in Chapter 7 the reader will find information about the degree to which the variable of proficiency level for which each task is constructed affects mediation strategy use. It also presents the findings derived from the qualitative analysis of texts produced as a result of tasks of different proficiency levels and gives information about how textual information has been incorporated into the target text.

Notes (1) (2) (3)

The corpus included 653 scripts – 52,950 words – of different testing levels as a result of 13 mediation tasks. It was performed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), version 20.0 licensed to the University of Athens. The help offered by the statistician, M. Laftsidou, RCeL Associate, was invaluable. The Greek source extract is: Η ‘Γαλάζια Σημαία’, σύμβολο ποιότητας σε περίπου 40 χώρες σήμερα απονέμεται με αυστηρά κριτήρια σε οργανωμένες ακτές και μαρίνες που διαχειρίζονται παράκτιοι Δήμοι, ξενοδόχοι και άλλοι φορείς. Το 2008 η Ελλάδα έχει 430 βραβευμένες ακτές και 8 μαρίνες που κέρδισαν τη ‘Γαλάζια Σημαία’.

7 Mediation Strategy Use and Proficiency Level Introduction The findings presented in Chapter 6 highlight the decisive role of task variables in the use of mediation strategies. The present chapter discusses the extent to which proficiency level affects mediation strategy use via both quantitative and qualitative analyses. As with the investigation of the degree to which task type plays a role in mediation strategy use (Chapter 6), the discovery of the most and least popular mediation strategies across proficiency levels was attempted by counting the number of scripts containing each mediation strategy. Efforts were also made to find any differences across levels as regards the number of words through which each strategy was realised in order to discover whether word number could be considered a discriminating feature in the different subcorpora investigated. An attempt was made to complement the results derived from the statistical analysis with qualitative findings by investigating the potential for linguistic features related to specific mediation strategies to discriminate between texts written by low- and high-proficiency writers. The assumption on which the particular examination was based is that the linguistic realisation of mediation strategies differs as the level of proficiency increases. Two corpora of B1 and C1 level scripts marked by trained KPG raters as fully satisfactory were thus examined with a view to both revealing the different ways in which (successful) mediation strategies are lexicalised and discovering whether certain linguistic features of texts and sentences can predict mediation output quality.

The Proficiency Level Variable: Quantitative Data Analysis The results, which are consistent with research in source-based performance and are briefly presented in the following sections, indicate the importance of proficiency level as a task variable which seems to 147

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determine the variety and the degree of popularity of written mediation strategies. Asención Delaney (2008: 142), for instance, argues that language proficiency can affect reading-to-write performance and strategy use in various ways, while Cohen (1994), who studied the strategies of five Portuguese speakers when writing summaries in English, found that writers with a medium level of proficiency seem to use fewer strategies than those with higher levels of English proficiency. Ferris (1993), who examined how texts produced by learners of varying proficiency groups differ in their use of linguistic and textual features, found that writers in the more proficient group seem to employ more textual features in their compositions, more specific lexical categories (e.g. emphatics), a variety of syntactic patterns and a wider range of cohesive devices. These are only a few of the studies which confirm that the variable of level is inextricably linked to differentiated performance. The main findings derived from this study as regards the role of level in mediation strategy use are discussed in the following sections.

The higher the proficiency level, the more scripts that include strategies of both types The analysis has revealed that there is a clear differentiation of mediation strategy use (see Table 7.1) between the lowest proficiency level scripts and the rest.1 The findings do not suggest that the higher the level, the more Type A strategies used. As a matter of fact, it seems that at the B2 level, the percentage related to Type A strategies is the highest of all three levels (10.6%) and their use, without being combined with Type B, is limited. On the contrary, fewer Type B strategies (without being combined with Type A strategies) are observed in high-proficiency scripts (7.2%). As far as the use of all types of strategies is concerned, the differences between B1 and B2 level scripts are statistically significant. This is evident in Table 7.2 which illustrates the differences between pairs of levels. Adding one more variable to my analysis – which is related to the type of task in terms of its mediatory requirements – reveals that at the B1 level, the combination of Type A and Type B strategy use appears in more scripts as a result of picking-up-information tasks than in scripts as a result of summarising tasks. At the B2 and C1 levels, exactly the opposite is true, as is manifested in Table 7.3. The number of Type A strategies used exclusively, i.e. without being combined with Type B strategies, is very low in B1, B2 and C1 scripts as a result of tasks requiring summarisation. In C1 picking-up-information scripts, Type B strategies are more apparent (11.7% of the total number)

Proficiency level 61,511 4 0.000*

Type A Type B Type A and B Nonea

Pearson Chi-square tests Strategy type Chi-square df Sig.

Proficiency level B2 Count % of B2 scripts 19 10.6 26 14.4 126 70.0 9 5.0 Count 7 13 159 1

C1 % of C1 scripts 3.9 7.2 88.3 0.6

Note that the item ‘none’ of the strategies is included in this table. This number has not been considered in the statistical significance tests as it is very low. * The Chi-square statistic is significant at the 0.05 level.

a

Count 6 65 108 1

Strategies

B1 % of B1 scripts 3.3 36.1 60.0 0.6

Table 7.1 Degree of popularity of mediation strategies in scripts across proficiency levels

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Table 7.2 Mediation strategy use across proficiency levels: Statistically significant differences Proficiency levela B1 Strategy type

Only Type A Only Type B Both Type A and B

B2 Column n %

3.4a 36.3a 60.3a

C1

11.1b 15.2b 73.7b

3.9a 7.3b 88.8c

a Tests are adjusted for all pairwise comparisons (a-b, b-c, a-c) within a row of each innermost subtable using the Bonferroni correction. Instances of percentages of the same row accompanied with the same letter or subscript (a-a, b-b, or c-c) do not indicate any sort of significant difference. The three rows of this table are: a) only Type A, b) only Type B, c) both Type A & B. Note: Values in the same row not sharing the same superscript are significantly different at p