Alignment of language tests with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is a complex process. One of many steps in this process involves the analysis and benchmarking of learner performances characteristic of one or another achievement level. It is the analysis of grammatical features of learner essays written during the national English examination in Lithuania that is at the focus of this article. The study aims to investigate to what extent a list of grammatical criterial features (GCFs), proposed by the English Profile Programme (EPP) at the University of Cambridge (Hawkins and Filipović, 2012), is applicable to Lithuanian learners. Bearing in mind the fact that the national examination of English in Lithuania is oriented towards levels B1 and B2, the purpose is to contribute to the empirical validation of the test by providing linguistic evidence from the essays of successful candidates. As the analysis shows, the corpus of examination essays used in this study contains many A2 structures, half of B1 and about one third of B2 structures proposed by the EPP team. The article discusses a number of issues related to the criteriality of individual GCFs and the applicability of a general list of features to specific learner groups.

No abstract

The present paper sets out to examine music-related metaphors in classical music reviews written in English. Previous researchers working in the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory have identified several music metaphors. One of the key domains of music conceptualization seems to be motion. However, their methodology of research did not rely on actual language data and on many occasions was discussed as debatable. The second generation cognitive linguists have focused on corpus and corpus-related methodologies of metaphor identification, elaborated many crucial concepts and thus questioned many ideas of previous researchers. The present paper relies on MIP methodology, or metaphor identification procedure, elaborated by a group of cognitive linguists and further updated by the Amsterdam group in Vrije University. The findings suggest that the MOTION metaphor features in the collected data most prominently. This metaphor together with CONTAINER and LINGUISTIC CREATION metaphors account for almost two thirds of all linguistic metaphors. Presumably, they structure classical music reviews and underlie our reasoning about classical music to a very large extent. Also a large number of linguistic metaphors tend to be more innovative than dead. The more innovative the metaphor, the more evaluative it is. A rather explicit evaluation (positive or negative) is part of the review genre.

No abstract

No abstract