UNIT

Macmillan
English Hub Intralinguistic Mediation – Writing 4

Task
You work for a prestigious international school in Spain, whose curriculum is rooted in traditional
learning methods. You feel the methodology is becoming outdated and both parents and fellow
teachers should be more open-minded towards new approaches to learning. You have seen the
infographic and read the article below and you think that it would be a good idea to introduce
emotional intelligence into the curriculum.

You decide to write an email to the headteacher to arrange a meeting to discuss your ideas
further. You know that she is very busy, so you want to give her a brief outline of why you think
this is a subject that is worth discussing that will persuade her to meet you to talk about it further.

Write your email to the headteacher in no more than 200 words.

Linguistic Mediation 4 © Macmillan Education Limited 2020 1

 UNIT
Macmillan
English Hub Intralinguistic Mediation – Writing 4

Intelligence: something to get emotional about?

How important do you think someone’s IQ is? Does it really tell us how intelligent someone is? Can it really give
us an idea of how successful that person will be in life? What if there is more to intelligence than how well
someone can answer a series of tricky questions?

For a long time now, IQ has been accepted as the measure of intelligence. And there’s no doubt that it does give
us a good idea of how clever someone is. It gives an indication of how well they can reason and how well they can
use the information in front of them to answer questions and solve puzzles. It is also a measure of how well they
can remember things and how quickly they are able to access the information in their memory. There is no doubt
that these are very useful abilities and ones that could give someone with a high IQ a distinct advantage over
someone with a lower IQ.

But some people argue that we should take a broader view of

what it means to be intelligent and that we should take into
account what they call a person’s emotional intelligence or EQ.
This type of intelligence is all about recognising feelings – both
your own and those of other people. People who have a high EQ
are better able to understand the emotions that they are feeling
at any given moment and better able to control and express
these emotions. They are also better at empathising with others
and picking up on how others are feeling.

How is this useful? Well, given that so much of our life is spent interacting with other people, either in our
personal or professional lives, being able to recognise how people are feeling will improve our ability to relate to
others and develop good relationships with them. People with a high EQ are able to work well in teams,
communicate well and resolve conflict – all useful skills in any area of life. In our personal lives, it means we can
have more fulfilling relationships with our friends and family. And in our work lives, we will have better working
relationships, meaning that we are able to be more effective in the workplace.

You might well be wondering if this emotional intelligence is something that you’re born with or something that
you can learn. Well, luckily, it can be taught and it can be learnt. One approach is character education, where
students learn to develop positive character traits like honesty and compassion. We can all learn how to listen to
others properly and empathise – we just need to learn to be more accepting of others, even if we don’t agree with
them or even understand them. By learning to be more self-aware, we can get more control over our emotions.
To do this, we can reflect on situations where we lost control of ourselves in the past – such as when we were
under a lot of stress – and learn to recognise those emotions when they arise again and not let them make us
behave in a way that we later regret.

Yes, we all need the ability to problem solve and apply logic, but we also all need to get along, don’t we?

Linguistic Mediation 4 © Macmillan Education Limited 2020 2


Macmillan
English Hub Intralinguistic Mediation – Writing
Teacher’s guide
This activity can be used with lesson
4.2 Thinking and thought after the
Speaking Hub.
Lead-in
Ask the students what type of school they went to.
Was it a traditional type of school or was it more
open to new methodologies? Did they have to
learn contents by heart (rote learning) or did they
do collaborative work? Ask for a show of hands to
find out what proportion of the class would have
preferred a different type of school. Ask them to
share their experiences with the group.
Lesson notes
1 Point out the task and give the students
time to read it. Make sure they understand
the context and the task: they need to write
a formal email to the headteacher outlining
why emotional intelligence should be taught
in the school where they work.
2 Make sure that the students are aware they
can only write a maximum of 200 words.
3 Give students six minutes to read the article
and look at the infographic individually.
They should underline or make notes of any
details relevant to the task.
4 Make sure they think carefully about the
recipient of the email. Ask the students if
they think the headteacher will already
know something about emotional
intelligence (she probably will) and how this
will affect what information they choose to
include. Ask them how the headteacher
might respond to the suggestion that they
change the curriculum (she might have
been involved in creating the current
curriculum and be reluctant to change).
5 Check that students notice that the register
of the article is informal, so they will need to
express the same information in a more
formal register.
6 Students can then write their emails in class
or for homework.
Assessment
Strategies
Students will have to make use of different
Linguistic Mediation 4 © Macmillan Education Limited 2020
UNIT
4
strategies to perform the mediation task
effectively. In this case, learners will have to:
 select, omit or adapt information.
 summarise information.
 paraphrase information.
The teacher may assess their production by using
the rubric provided, bearing in mind the strategies
and descriptors for the level.
For this task:
 the register should be formal.
 the production should reflect the functions
of informing, giving opinions and
persuading with appropriate grammar and
vocabulary for the level.
Assessing the task
1 Students should produce a coherent
email with an appropriate opening and
closing that includes the information they
were asked to provide from both the text
and the infographic.
2 Students will have to focus on the parts of
the text that are most relevant to the task.
3 Information will need to be paraphrased.
4 Students will have to adapt the tone of the
information to a formal one given the
context of the task.
5 Students should only write 200 words.
Mediation descriptors
(Royal Decree 1041/2017)
 Relay orally written or oral texts
paraphrasing or summarising the
information, data and opinions from long
varied texts from different sources … to
produce a coherent target text.
 Use appropriate strategies in order to
adapt source texts according to the
purpose, context, interlocutors and
communication channel without altering
information and stands.
 Produce a coherent and cohesive text
from a number of source texts.
 Quote and use references appropriately
according to the communicative context.
 Convey accurately the most important
points from the source texts together with
details considered relevant to the interest
and needs of the receiver.
3
 UNIT
Macmillan
English Hub Intralinguistic Mediation – Writing 4

Written Intralinguistic Mediation Rubric

PASS
SCORING FAIL PASS TOTAL
WITH MERIT

Range and  Insufficient use of  Sufficient use of the  Wide range of

accuracy vocabulary and vocabulary and the vocabulary and
grammar of the grammar of the grammar of the level
level. level. used.
 Lack of grammatical  Appropriate  Good grammatical
and lexical control. grammatical and and lexical control.
Errors impair lexical control. Very few errors
communication. Errors do not impair occur.
communication.
Organisation  Unclear and  Clear and coherent  Clear and coherent
and cohesion incoherent text with text with appropriate with good use of
insufficient use of though limited use of linking mechanisms.
linking mechanisms. linking mechanisms.  The text is logically
 The text is not  Some attempt to divided into
divided into structure the text paragraphs of an
paragraphs. into paragraphs has appropriate length.
been made.
Mediation of the  Does not take into  Selection of the key  Selection of the key
text account the context information taking information taking
and the needs of the into account the into account the
Micro interlocutor in context and the context and the
strategies: selecting needs of the needs of the
 Selection information. interlocutor. Some interlocutor. No
 Summary Relevant points are relevant points might relevant points are
 Paraphrase omitted, and the be omitted, although omitted.
 Streamlining task is not fulfilled. the fulfillment of the  Clearly
 Extension  Unable to task is not hindered. communicates the
 Interpretation communicate the  Communication, with information using all
 Other information using some difficulty, of the micro strategies
the micro strategies the information by required.
required. using the micro
strategies required.
Cultural  Relevant cultural  Any relevant cultural  All relevant cultural
mediation connotations of the connotations in the connotations in the
source text are not source text are source text are
communicated, communicated, clearly
impeding although communicated.
understanding. incompletely or with
some omissions.
Register and  The register, length  The register, length  A very good
task fulfilment and content are not and content are fulfilment of the task
appropriate for the appropriate for the in relation to
interlocutor and/or interlocutor and the register, length and
the situation. situation. content.
 Unable to mediate  Mediation is carried  Mediation is carried
or significant out with little out with no difficulty.
difficulties doing so. difficulty.

Linguistic Mediation 4 © Macmillan Education Limited 2020 4