Initial stages of individual teacher CEFR-related classroom curriculum projects at Miyazaki International College

Abstract

The introduction of mediation as the fourth mode of communication into the CEFR has the potential to revolutionise language teaching. The development of teachers’ competence in this area has become a challenge for teacher training. The paucity of curricula and courses aimed at developing pre-service teachers’ awareness and competence in mediating communication has motivated this research, and the article is intended to serve two main purposes, namely, to identify mediation activities performed by in-service teachers and to outline strategies of training preservice teachers. Research methodology included both qualitative analysis of 15 video-recorded lesson transcripts and quantitative analysis of a survey of 100 pre-service teachers of English in Russia. The lessons by Russian in-service teachers of English were analyzed to find evidence of classroom mediation and the survey was conducted to discover their familiarity with the CEFR and to elicit their views on the changes needed in teacher training after the appearance of the CEFR Companion Volume. The results indicate that communicating ideas and concepts lies at the core of classroom interaction, and thus special training is needed for language teachers to perform it. The practical implications of this study include a sample of piloted tasks for various proficiency levels aimed at facilitating the pre-service teachers’ awareness of mediation and the ability to perform it in the classroom.