Reading comprehension: Mediation

Hinweise zur Aufgabenform „Mediation“

Unter Mediationsaufgaben versteht man die Wiedergabe bestimmter, aus dem Text entnommener Informationen auf Deutsch oder die Erklärung der Bedeutung eines schwierigen Satzes oder einer anspruchsvollen Passage auf Deutsch. Somit wird auch die Frage auf Deutsch formuliert.

Im Gegensatz zur Übersetzung wird bei der Mediation keine wörtliche Wiedergabe des Textinhalts verlangt, sondern es geht darum, dass die wesentliche Aussage oder zentrale inhaltliche Aspekte erfasst werden. Teilweise wird auch eine stichpunktartige Beantwortung der Frage akzeptiert, d.h., es müssen keine vollständigen Sätze formuliert werden. Zur Lenkung der Fragestellung werden auch manchmal bestimmte Aspekte, die bei der Antwort zu berücksichtigen sind, vorgegeben.

Während bei den vier vorangegangenen Aufgabenstellungen eine eindeutige Antwort zu erwarten ist, gibt es bei der Mediation sicherlich Varianten, die auch richtig sind.

Text: In L.A., trying to keep a lid on racial strife

A  At Leimert Park, a gathering place for protests and rallies in south-central Los Angeles, the thunder of djembe drums adds a dramatic accompaniment to a long queue of local protest speakers. As each steps up to a microphone planted in the grass, their words seem to ring with echoes of an earlier violent era in the battle for civil rights. „The time is now,“ yells one protestor to the crowd of about 350 holding placards and signs. „No more police terrorism.“

B  The occasion, a community-wide gathering to protest the killing of a 13-year-old African-American youth by Los Angeles police, has become another major flashpoint in Los Angeles race relations. For several weeks, black leaders have held meetings and marches to draw attention to the shooting as evidence that the LAPD has not moved in its decades-old culture of riding herd over ethnic residents as adversaries rather than citizens to „serve and protect.“

C  It’s been more 10 years since the LAPD became the international poster child for dysfunctional policing – first in the Rodney King beating, then with two trials of O.J. Simpson. Now, the incident of Devin Brown – who was shot and killed by police when he refused orders to stop fleeing in a stolen car – once again raises the question of how much police reform, if any, has occurred since the largest riots in US history here raised public consciousness of the problem of police abuse.

D  Despite the anger in Leimert Park, there is some consensus that much improvement has been made throughout American police departments. Yet there is also consensus that the patterns of racist behavior exhibited by police have not been adequately addressed. „You might say the training, and equipment side of American policing has come a long way since Rodney King but that the human side, police interacting with residents, has come less far,“ says Mary Powers, director of the National Coalition on Police Accountability (NCOPA).

E  „I think racism is the problem here in Los Angeles,“ says Alice Jones of the Congress of Racial Equality. She points out that 83 percent of LAPD officers do not live within city limits and many appear to have had little exposure to racial diversity. But other observers say there simply has not been enough focus on police training in the specific area of emergency response. That means better understanding of the complexity of one’s own reflexes and emotions when life or death decisions must be made in seconds. Here in Los Angeles, Ms. Powers and others say, there are still deeply ingrained behaviors in the „police culture“ that are strong enough to survive new chiefs of police, city council changes, and turnovers of mayors and oversight boards. Codes of silence, in which police officers refuse to rat on colleagues for wrongdoing, undermine efforts to establish accountability.

F  There are also African-Americans willing to point the finger at the actions of black perpetrators that have led to police confrontations. „Many in black neighborhoods seem to forget that in every one of these run-ins with police there has been at the core of the incident, an African-American breaking the law and resisting arrest,“ says Ted Hayes, who runs temporary housing for the homeless.

Adapted from an article in The Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2005

Mediation

Task: Beantworten Sie die Fragen auf Deutsch!