INTERCULTURAL MEDIATION — REASSESSMENT OF STUDENT’S FIRST LANGUAGE ROLE IN THE PROCESS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Abstract

Mediation is a relatively new concept to the methodology of foreign language teaching. Educators in Ukraine became familiar with it due to CEFR publication at the beginning of the 2000s. This type of students’ activity is considered by the author as a positive solution in the long-lasting controversy about the role of student’s native language in the process of foreign language acquisition: mediation is capable of overcoming training and routine nature of translationbased tasks and exercises. Instead, it is aimed at solving real life situations: a mediator is a third party who 1) helps establishing contact and provides exchange of information between representatives of different cultures who don’t speak each other’s language or 2) helps another person understand weird and unknown phenomena of another culture. In this respect mediator is a person who possesses both foreign language skills and has high intercultural awareness. Being aimed at solving such situations this activity is an excellent supplement for communicative-based approach. Besides, it helps introduce the true atmosphere of ‘dialogue of cultures’ in the process of foreign language acquisition. Although it has been nearly two decades since mediation became a part of educators’ terminology, this activity has very low recognition and is hardly ever applied to practice. In this respect it is deemed necessary to promote further research in the sphere of intercultural mediation and develop typical communicative situations where mediation makes sense in order to make it an integral component of foreign language learning process.