Ever since Perlmutter’s (1978) Unaccusative Hypothesis, intransitive verbs have been treated as comprising of two subclasses (i) unergatives, and (ii) unaccusatives. Evidence from sundry languages has shown that even though the unergative/unaccusative dichotomy is a universal property, there appears to be some language specific parametric variation as to the criteria for differentiating the two classes as well. In line with this claim, the present paper examines different diagnostic tests for unaccusativity/unergativity with a special focus on their (in)applicability to Slovenian data. Our analysis singles out three fairly reliable tests for determining the unaccusative status of Slovenian predicates: (i) the reduced relatives test, (ii) the impersonal passives test, and (iii) the secondary imperfectivization test. The discussion, however, also points out that none is flawless, as they also constitute false positives and false negatives.

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.

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The present paper draws on the report of a five-year project that aligned the Slovenian national exams in English to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR). Discussed here are the key findings of the relating project, carried out by the National Examination Centre, a central institution for external assessment in Slovenia, for the following exams: the Vocational Matura (for technical secondary schools, vocational-technical schools, and vocational courses) and the General Matura (for general secondary education programmes). The focus of the paper is on the interpretation of the findings of the project, the significance of relating the aforementioned exams to the CEFR, the implications of project results for future language test development and, most importantly, the impact of the findings on the development of secondary school-level English education programmes in Slovenia.

The article presents a study of a CEFR B2-level reading subtest that is part of the Slovenian national secondary school leaving examination in English as a foreign language, and compares the test-taker actual performance (objective difficulty) with the test-taker and expert perceptions of item difficulty (subjective difficulty). The study also analyses the test-takers' comments on item difficulty obtained from a while-reading questionnaire. The results are discussed in the framework of the existing research in the fields of (the assessment of) reading comprehension, and are addressed with regard to their implications for item-writing, FL teaching and curriculum development. stopar and ilc: item and task difficulty 319