The article deals with the mechanism of creating metaphor in the context of the theory of conceptual integration. A particular emphasis is laid on the basic theses of the theory of conceptual metaphor and the theory of conceptual integration. The comparison of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson’s theory of conceptual metaphor and G. Fauconnier and M. Turner’s theory of conceptual integration is carried out. The analysis of the examples of metaphorical mapping of the concept BOOK is conducted and three conceptual metaphors of the given concept (the target domain) are defined. Each conceptual metaphor is described, the input spaces, generic and blended spaces are defined. The integrated roles and emergent properties and structures are determined and explained.

This article is an attempt to study both the factors affecting the efficiency of teaching the English language as a second one (ESL) in non-linguistic universities and the peculiarities of monitoring students' performance in a blended learning environment which appeared due to the pandemic of 2020-2021. Blended learning is considered to be a type of learning that combines traditional teacher-led learning with interactive learning, however, it does not mean complete replacement of classroom learning with pure e-learning. In the context of blended learning, its increased efficiency is one of the main issues of teaching and learning activity, especially when it comes to teaching a foreign language in a non-linguistic university. In this case the efficiency of teaching depends on the external and internal factors. External (objective) factors refer to the factors that influence the educational process organization and professional qualities of the teacher. Internal (subjective) factors include factors related to the learning activity of the student and their personal qualities. In the course of the study, the authors conducted a survey of 131 students from three non-linguistic universities in the city of Irkutsk; in the given research they analyzed one external factor - creation of an information and educational environment and a number of internal factors (motivation to learn a foreign language; students' self-organization; satisfaction with educational activities). To create a blended learning environment in all three universities, the Moodle platform was used, on which various courses were developed, all of them include advisory, information, reference and test modules. To assess the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process, there is a specific control system, the main task of which, when teaching foreign languages at a university, is to establish a correspondence between the real level of students' language, speech and sociocultural competences and the requirements of the curriculum. In this article, the authors consider two types of control used in the process of blended learning: current and midpoint and the possibility of using two assessment systems (five-mark grading system and passed / not passed system).

The article presents the authors' insights concerning the problem of implicit meanings in its historic, cultural and linguistic aspects, as well as the needs of participants of communication in creating special conditions for interpretation and understanding of the message. The aim of the article is to introduce the notion of a communicative triad and its main constituents, such as "a proper addressee" and "a side participant'. Much attention is given to special means of creating informational insufficiency, i.e. erasing the connection between the significant and the signified (code mismatching), ambiguous pronoun reference, reference to the content of the shared experience. Of special interest are the cases where the targeted recipient of communication receives a semiotic complication of the utterance, as well as the metonymic transference based on the connection between what a speaker produces and the reality the proper addressee perceives. The following conclusion is drawn: all the described mechanisms are viewed as realization of a most essential property of human communication, i.e. its selective character which is achieved through various kinds of transformations of the reported utterance, so that it reaches its proper addressee in the form and size that would correspond to the communicative interests of the speaker.

No abstract