The buzz word around the Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas (EOIs) in Spain this year is mediation and the importance of teachers at these centres getting to grips with the concept cannot be stressed enough. In a series of three blog posts we will be taking a look at some of the key issues surrounding this topic.
For our first article we reached out to Manuel del Rio and Francisco J. Pose, two of the teachers who provide teacher training at the EOI in Santiago de Compostela. Among the courses the EOI will be offering as part of their summer training programme for teachers is one led by Manuel and Francisco on linguistic mediation. We had a few questions on mediation and we figured getting in touch with them would be a good place to start to get some clear answers. Here’s what they had to tell us:
Question: Let’s start with the elephant in the room: What is the big deal with mediation? Is it really all that important in our daily lives?