THE TRAINING OF MEDIATORS IN ITALY: A TEACHING METHOD FOR THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
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Abstract
This contribution aims at exploring a topic which has gained growing popularity as far as European languages are concerned, but which is still rarely analyzed when it comes to Chinese language, that is, the teaching of mediation skills within language courses. Due to the constant growing of migration trends, mediators are playing an increasingly important role in Western societies. Back in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) had introduced mediation as one of the four main linguistic activities together with reception, production and interaction. Subsequently, several European scholars began to research the teaching of mediation skills within language courses. As far as Italy is concerned, Bachelor and Master’s Degree courses in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation have flourished ever since, however, there is not a univocal definition of the identity and roles of mediators and there are no definite guidelines as far as training is concerned. After a review of the state of the art on the role and training of mediators, the paper will present some teaching materials and activities aimed at training students’ mediation skills and the acquisition of domain-specific Chinese, in particular, legal Chinese. It will then present a didactic laboratory on linguistic mediation for the public services, which involved a group of students attending a Master degree course in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation, whose major was Chinese language. It will also illustrate the results of a pretest and a posttest carried out at the beginning and at the end of the laboratory with the aim of testing the teaching materials. The analysis of the results will try to prove the effectiveness of the materials and of the activities proposed. Finally, the paper will provide some reflections and suggestions for future courses based on the results.
How to Cite
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Chinese as a foreign language, Chinese language teaching, Chinese language acquisition, Chinese for Specific Purposes (CSP), Mediators’ training
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