That’s not relevant in your case: teaching and testing the linguistic skill of mediation in Legal English courses

CHOVANCOVÁ, Barbora and Alena HRADILOVÁ. That’s not relevant in your case: teaching and testing the linguistic skill of mediation in Legal English courses. In EULETA Legal English Workshop: Diverse Approaches to Teaching Legal English. 2022.

Basic information

• Original name: That’s not relevant in your case: teaching and testing the linguistic skill of mediation in Legal English courses
• Name in Czech: To ve Vašem případě není relevantní: výuka a testování jazykové dovednosti mediace
• Authors: CHOVANCOVÁ, Barbora and Alena HRADILOVÁ.
• Edition: EULETA Legal English Workshop: Diverse Approaches to Teaching Legal English, 2022.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Keywords (in Czech): Angličtina pro specifické účely; právnická angličtina; metodika výuky angličtiny
• Keywords in English: English for Specific Purposes; Legal English; English language methodology
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Effective communication with lay audiences should be an essential part of any lawyer’s skill set, and due to this fact, it is our duty, as legal English teachers, to train our students in it. Linguistic mediation has become a buzz word among foreign language professionals, and rightly so, as it helps bridge differences between professionals and non-professionals. Needless to say, many of us have designed mediation activities tailor-made to our specific Legal English contexts and learners. The question that arises, especially for those of us working at universities, is how to evaluate and maybe even mark mediation activities. The range of texts students produce varies greatly and it makes it difficult to objectively and fairly assess, especially as utterances such as “that’s not relevant in your case” instead of the expected explanation, may be appropriate. In this workshop, several different types of mediation activities made for Law undergraduates will be shown and the participants will be invited to share their views on grading them before our own marking scales will be shown and discussed.