Mediation in the context of professionally oriented foreign language teaching in higher educational institutions

The article considers mediation as a new form of interaction as linguodidactic aspect. Mediation activity underlies communication in a multicultural society and is a necessary condition for comfortable interaction. For the first time, the descriptor scale for online interaction and mediation was published in 2020 as an additional volume to the document ‟Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR)”. The presented communicative spheres and roles involving mediation are consistent with the global scale of foreign language proficiency levels, which allows developing the necessary mediation skills. Also they can be a base for the modeling of communicative situations in professionally oriented teaching of a foreign language. Professionally oriented teaching of a foreign language at a university is aimed at preparing professionals who are competitive and ready for successful communication in their chosen field of activity. The mediation activity of a teacher and students in a foreign language class allows for productive interaction in order to model communicative situations that contain not only a communicative task, but also a professional context inherent in the studied linguistic culture. Modeling of communicative situations for this purpose is possible on the basis of communicative activity and constructivist approaches. The constructivist approaches reflects the value attitudes of the communicants and their attempts to value-rational choice of meanings and concepts in the process of communication, which is also the basis for mediation activity as interaction in language and interaction in relationships.