DEVELOPING EFL ORAL SKILLS THROUGH LINGUISTIC MEDIATION IN THE SECONDARY EDUCATION CLASSROOM

Abstract

Linguistic mediation is one of the aspects to be developed within communicative competence, as established by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2002). The aim of this study is to check whether linguistic mediation somehow contributes the development of other communicative constructs, in this case oral production. To this end, a group of 40 students from the 1st year of Bachillerato at a public secondary school in Madrid carried out a total of eight language mediation activities designed ad hoc. The activities were carried out once a week, in 50-minute sessions. The participants took an oral production test before and after the didactic intervention. Oral production was measured in terms of coherence and cohesion, lexical and grammatical variety, fluency, interaction, and pronunciation. The results showed that after the completion of the mediation activities, the students’ fluency and interaction had improved significantly, thus suggesting the added value of linguistic mediation not only as important in itself but as a facilitator in the development of other communicative skills.