MEDIATION
SUMMARY OF STRATEGIES
Here is a summary of all the tools and strategies that you may employ in the Written Mediation part of the Certificate Exam:
Linking to previous knowledge: you can link the new information with previous knowledge by asking questions to your audience (for example asking them if they remember something they know or they’ve had experience about) giving them extra background information and explanations, making comparisons, showing contrast or even creating metaphors and giving examples and more details. You may also want to draw conclusions that weren’t explicitly stated in the source text. When you link new knowledge to previous knowledge you always add to and expand the original text.
You may also choose to amplify the text in order to make the information more “digestible” to your interlocutor. In this way, you may break down the information (for example, breaking down a process in a series of steps, presenting instructions through bullet points or highlighting and categorising the main points of an argument presenting them in a logical sequence, also using bullet points) You may also want to repeat the same information in different ways to reinforce your message.
Compressing the text: On the other hand, you might consider it better to get rid of irrelevant information that may confuse or disorient your interlocutor, therefore making your mediated text more concise. For this purpose, you may want to regroup ideas, and eliminate repetitions and digressions, that is, you may choose to make a summary of the text.
Transforming the text: finally, sometimes you neither add to nor streamline the text, but you transform it by reorganising and recategorising ideas in a different way. In mediation it is also essential to paraphrase the text, and change its register and style by means of synonyms and modifying grammar structures and syntax.
Mediation activities and mediation strategies (longer explanation)