This paper aims at analysing mediation sequences carried out in teletandem exchanges in order to assess and evaluate oral intercomprehension skills. Research questions regard the dynamics of communication processes in mediating concepts sequences and intralingual strategies for adapting discourse. This research will test the existing evaluation and assessment tools.
In a globalized world plurilingual oral communication is widespread. Among all different situations, there are those in which two or more speakers communicate using different languages: interlocutors activate their receptive competence and use productive strategies to facilitate communication. As a consequence, new plurilingual language teaching/learning scenarios are institutionalized in Higher Education in order to: i) develop skills and strategies for preparing learners to face the mentioned communication processes, named intercomprehension (Jamet & Spiţa, 2010); ii) raise language awareness and give value to learners' language biography. Research in this field is strongly needed also for evaluating intercomprehension skills; we aim at filling this gap with an empirical study focused on mediating concepts' sequences (CoE 2017) which are components of teletandem interactions in intercomprehension. Data is: i) transcribed oral VoIP in interactions, carried out by students of two different universities in two different countries and ii) language biographies of the students. Communication is in two related romance languages. Research questions regard: i) dynamics of communication processes in mediating concepts sequences (how do they start? can they be analysed following the model of Varonis and Gass, 1985, and that of Linell, 1998); ii) intralingual strategies for adapting discourse - simplification, condensation, elaboration and refocusing (Linell 1998; Stathopoulou 2015) - and, particularly, lexical strategies (i.e. approximation using pan-romance vocabulary, word coinage, periphrasis; Tarone 1977; Meissner et al. 2004). The final aim of this research will be double : on the one hand we will try to shed light on oral intercomprehension skills developed by the students and on the other hand we will put to the test the existing assessment and evaluation tools, i.e. the REFIC (De Carlo, 2015) and the evaluating protocol of the EVALIC project (https://evalic.eu).
