As users of languages, we all find ourselves in situations when we act as mediators [διαμεσολαβητές] between two or more speakers or writers, who need us so we can explain to them or simply render information in a way that they understand. Think, for example, of how many times you’ve been in a position at work/school or a gathering, at home or abroad, where you’ve had to explain a word, a phrase or a whole extract of a text written in English to a Greek speaker who doesn’t understand the language all that well.

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A_M3 Or, think about those instances when people with limited Greek have asked you to provide in English the main points of say a magazine article, a poster, a leaflet, a film or a book review. Finally, imagine yourself at the immigration office in a Greek city, trying to help some people, with little Greek and low English literacy, understand what they’re supposed to write in a form they must fill in.

Drawing from real life situations, mediation activities in the writing test papers, in all KPG languages from B1 level onwards, require that candidates selectively extract information, ideas and meanings from a source text in Greek and use them selectively to produce their own text, in the target language. The text type and the communicative purpose of the target text may be different from that of the source text. For example, the source text of a B2 level written mediation activity could be a webpage in Greek whose communicative purpose is to inform the public about a new volunteer organization. The mediation task could require that the candidate write the text for a promotion leaflet explaining, on the basis of the webpage, why this is a worthwhile organization. On the other hand, the source and the target text type might be similar or the same.  For example, the source text of a C1 level activity could be an article in Greek about the recently celebrated ipad, explaining what it is and what it does. The mediation task could be a news article about the hundreds of people that waited in line to get this product the first day it went on the market and, on the basis of the Greek text, explain why.