The paper examines the results of the CEFR alignment project for the Slovenian national examinations in English. The authors aim to validate externally the standard-setting procedures by adopting a socio-cognitive model of validation (Khalifa & Weir, 2009; Weir, 2005) to analyse the scoring, context and cognitive validity of three reading subtests: the Slovenian B2 national examination and the international examinations FCE and CAE, aligned with B2 and C1 respectively. The relative comparability between the three subtests is determined by analysing the results of tests that have been administered to a group of 80 test-takers (expected CEFR level: B2). The placement of the test-takers also reveals to what extent the judgements of the Slovenian panellists about CEFR levels coincide with those reported for FCE and CAE. The study thus also explores whether the high degree of agreement between the judges on the alignment panel can be solely attributed to their adequate and precise understanding of CEFR descriptors - which is directly mirrored in their setting of the cut scores and relating the examination to relevant CEFR levels - or whether it can also be ascribed to their shared educational, national and cultural background. The answers to these questions are paramount because they reveal the descriptive adequacy of CEFR descriptors and because different interpretations of CEFR levels can significantly affect national testing policies and, consequently, language teaching and testing.
COBISS.SI-ID: 56449378
This article explores some interesting aspects from the German mass media discourse of the Bologna Process (news magazine Spiegel 1999-2005), analysed with the international project Bologna-Reform als gesellschaftliche und sprachliche Herausforderung in slowenischen, deutschen und bosnisch-herzegowinischen Leitmedien. The article illustrates how the Bologna Process is constructed linguistically in mass media discourse during the first years after the declaration was signed in June 1999, focusing on the lexical-semantic units Bologna-Prozess, Bachelor and Master. Employing discourse analysis, the interrelation between language change (changes in meaning of words and texts) and knowledge of the society about the Bologna Process has been explored. Besides knowledge aspects of these lexical.semantic units, comparatively analysed in both articles and letters to the editor of the core discourse, themes and agents of the side discourse have also been addressed in short.
COBISS.SI-ID: 55508578
This contribution deals with British English conventional similes containing comparison markers as and like. The introductory part addresses issues concerning the difference/similarity between similes and metaphors, component elements of metaphors and similes, lexical variation and factors that contribute to the memorability of similes. For the purpose of the study, a database consisting of 133 as-similes and 125 like-similes was collected drawing on examples found in British monolingual dictionaries. On the basis of this database, structural types of as- and like-similes were determined. A comparison of the structure of as-similes and like-similes shows one basic similarity, i.e., that the vehicle position is mostly, though not exclusively, occupied by a nominal phrase. Otherwise, no other structural parallel can be drawn between both groups of similes. Then follows the analysis of the semantic fields of nominal phrases in the vehicle part of as- and like-similes, the emphasis being on whether they overlap or diverge, and the analysis of the semantic fields of adjectives in the ground part of as-similes. Last but not least, similes whose ground is represented by the same adjective or adverb and whose vehicle is characterized by different nominal phrases (or rarely pronouns and clauses) are taken into consideration.
COBISS.SI-ID: 56310370
The paper concerns the history of classics in Slovenia and deals with Slovene students of Greek and Latin at the University of Graz (Austria) at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Among them there are many teachers, headmasters, translators, textbook writers, lexicographers and public intellectuals, who became important figures in Slovene cultural life during the first half of the past century. The most prominent is Josip Tominšek, a philologist and teacher of Greek and Latin as well as the author of the first Slovene textbooks and other manuals for the study of Greek.
COBISS.SI-ID: 56780130
In this article, attention is drawn to the fact that phenomena related to cross-linguistic transfer are of central relevance to contact-induced language change both in translational situations and in cases of classical language contact. It is suggested that translation, which is in actual fact a special type of language contact, is an important mechanism of contact-induced language change which can be productively studied along with other types of language-contact situations, typically associated with societal bilingualism and with language-learning settings. In instances of classical language contact as well as of translation, two (and sometimes more) languages interact with each other, with various consequences for language processing and production, whereby linguistic material (lexical, conceptual, structural, stylistic, etc.) is mapped from one language onto another language. This results in contact phenomena of various kinds. While cross-linguistic transfer effects, especially in language production, have been intensely studied for several decades, the impact of cross-linguistic transfer as a mechanism of language variation and change in translation has so far received very little attention. The present article examines cross-linguistic transfer as an instrument of language change in a single multilingual society in both translational and classical language-contact situations, providing examples from Slovene and its contacts with German and Italian at different times of its history. The study also discusses some possible epistemological reasons why the relationship between translation and language contact has for a long time been a marginal research issue, although several researchers have emphasised that the two types of situation share some fundamental features.