Procedures used in alternative assessment include self-assessment, peer-assessment, portfolios, student-teacher conferences, interviews and observation. These can be monolingual or multilingual.

Meaning does not pre-exist the communication or the reception of a written or an oral text. It is co-constructed by interlocutors or by the reader or the hearer in interaction with the text. Meaning is thus the product of collaboration, i.e. the interactional work accomplished by all the participants in the interaction (also the author of a given text). All interlocutors contribute to the co-construction and the negotiation of meaning, even when they contribute in different languages or with para-verbal or non-verbal behaviours (such as gestures, mimic, interjections, …). In case of clashes in the interaction, misunderstandings, lack of a common language or uneven linguistic competences in the language of interaction, the mediator plays a crucial role in building bridges between interlocutors and/or across different sources of information. He can, for instance, participate in the co-construction and negotiation of meaning by “co-constructing ideas/solutions; asking others to explain their thinking and identifying inconsistencies in their thought processes; summarising the discussion and deciding on next steps” (Council of Europe 2020: 109).

Further reading:

Piccardo E. and North B. (2019), The action-oriented approach: A dynamic vision of language education, Multilingual Matters, Bristol.

Cross-linguistic mediation is an everyday social activity and occurs when there is a need to communicate information from (at least) one language into another (or others), to have something clarified, to (re)interpret a message, to sum up what a text says for one or more persons, for an audience or for a group of readers, etc. taking into account the addressee, the communicative scenario or situation and the aim of the communicative encounter or task.

Cross-linguistic mediation tasks are those tasks which require users of languages to relay information from one language to another for a given communicative purpose or to engage in meaning negotiation across languages.

A genre, or text type, refers to specific features of a text, either spoken or written, which make use of conventional formulations, registers, images, etc.; these help the learner in anticipating and comprehending text structure and content (CEFR, p. 165). Examples of genres are a personal text message, a newspaper article, an advertisement, an email, a report, etc.

Knowledge, awareness and understanding of the relations – similarities and distinctive differences – between different cultural communities. These communities may include the learners’ cultural communities, those of speakers of the languages they are learning or others too.

The ability to communicate and interact effectively and appropriately with people of other national, regional or social cultures.

Mediation is intralinguistic if the need to relay information occurs in situations where just one language is being used. It is mediation within the same language but across discourses, texts and individuals.

Learners draw upon all of "their linguistic and cultural resources and experiences in order to fully participate in social and educational contexts, achieving mutual understanding, gaining access to knowledge and in turn further developing their linguistic and cultural repertoire" (Council of Europe 2020: 123).

Mediation is one of the four modes of communication alongside reception, production and interaction. Mediation can happen within one language – for instance summarising and paraphrasing texts – or involve different languages or dialects (cross-linguistic mediation).

We mediate, in formal and informal contexts, when there is need to make information accessible to a friend, a colleague, a family member, a tourist, a boss, an audience in a conference, and generally to parties who do not grasp this information or have difficulties to understand due to linguistic or/and cultural differences. The CEFR-CV operationalizes mediation into: mediating communication, mediating concepts and mediating a text. Mediation is a broad concept that involves different dimensions (e.g. relational, cognitive, emotional, cultural, pedagogic) and aims to build bridges and connections.

“Mediation strategies are the techniques employed to clarify meaning and facilitate understanding. As a mediator, the user/learner may need to shuttle between people, between texts, between types of discourse and between languages, […] depending on the mediation context” (Council of Europe 2020: 117). An effective cross-linguistic mediator is one who is able and trained to activate a number of strategies in order to deal with source language information and make himself/herself understood in another language. S/he may need to summarize texts, to paraphrase, to condense, to reorganize source information.

In either cross-linguistic or intra-linguistic mediation, the mediator acts as an intermediary between texts, languages, discourses, cultures. S/he transfers/relays information from one text to the other in order to achieve a communicative purpose (e.g. to advise, to suggest, to inform etc.). S/he operates as a facilitator, a meaning negotiator, a meaning-making agent especially when s/he intervenes in situations which require linguistic and intercultural reconciliation, settlement or compromise of meanings. The mediator’s task is to bridge or minimize communication gaps between texts, languages and users of different languages. Specifically for cross-linguistic mediation, with which the METLA project is concerned, “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” (Stathopoulou, 2015: 3).

This term refers to the transmission of knowledge using various modes of representation – written texts, visual representations, sound etc. With multimodal representation, text, image, sound, etc. combine to create meaning that is not just an addition of separate modes, but the result of the interplay between them. Multimodal analysis thus means to analyse how text, image, sound etc. combine, rather than analysing them separately.

“Plurilingual and pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social agent has proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures. This is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the user may draw.” (CEFR, p. 168).

Plurilingual competence involves “the ability to call flexibly upon an interrelated, uneven, plurilinguistic repertoire” (Council of Europe 2020: 30). According to the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001), plurilingual competence may involve (among others) the ability to:

• switch from one language to another;
• express oneself in one language and understand the other;
• call upon the knowledge of a number of languages to understand a text;
• bring the whole of their linguistic equipment into play;
• play with alternative forms of expression in different languages;
• mediate across languages.

Plurilingual education incorporates tasks and learning activities involve several varieties of languages which emphasise the relationships between languages and cultures, thus creating linguistic bridges.

Plurilingualism is an individual’s ability to use “a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which languages interrelate and interact”. Taking into account the type of communication required in different situations, the language user can “call flexibly upon different parts of this competence to achieve effective communication with a particular interlocutor” (Council of Europe, 2001: 4). The CEFR promotes a plurilingual approach, that is, the learning of languages on the part of the language learner which languages can be related to each other so as to build up a plurilingual repertoire.

“[A]ny purposeful action considered by an individual as necessary in order to achieve a given result in the context of a problem to be solved, an obligation to fulfil or an objective to be achieved” (CEFR, 2001, p. 10). In language education, a task refers to a language activity which requires leaners to use language in meaningful, semi-authentic ways to achieve a specific purpose and which leads to an actual outcome.

(See Piccardo E., Czura A., Erickson G., North B. (2019), A quality assurance matrix for CEFR use, Glossary, Council of Europe (European Centre for Modern Languages), Graz, available at www.ecml.at/ECML-Programme/Programme2016-2019/QualityassuranceandimplementationoftheCEFR/Glossary/tabid/3025/language/en-GB/Default.aspx.)

Transversal competences are competences that do not relate specifically to the learning of languages or any school subject but are relevant across the spectrum of all subjects in school curricula. They are essential in enabling people to achieve their full potential, including in their education, their personal and professional lives and in their role as citizens of an increasingly globalised and unpredictable world. Various other terms, such as ‘soft skills’, interdisciplinary skills, life skills, etc., are used to describe the same or a similar range of competences. ‘21st century skills’ is another term that became current in education policy in the latter part of the 20th century, reflecting the need to ensure that young people were equipped to face the challenges of a fast-changing world heading into a new millennium.

(Voir Rossner R., Transversal competences in foreign language education, www.ecml.at/transversalcompetences.)