PROFICIENCY TESTS AS SOCIAL PRACTICES

THE ETS TOEFL ITP AND THE UFSM TESLLE

Abstract

For the permanence and/or admission in post-graduate courses in Brazil, the students must prove sufficiency or proficiency in, at least, one modern foreign language. In the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), this proof is mainly achieved through the results of proficiency or sufficiency tests such as the TESLLE (Teste de Suficiência em Leitura em Língua Estrangeira) and the reading section of the TOEFL-ITP (Test of English as a Foreign Language - Institutional Testing Program). In this way, the present study reports preliminary results of an ongoing research that analyses these tests as social practices of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) testing from official documents and samples of such tests. We identify and discuss the roles and the characteristics of the tests in regard to its texts and the structures and foci of the questions, as well as the testing processes, which regard the applications conditions, objectives and target-audiences. It is expected of the results to promote reflections on the possibility to pedagogize or even to reformulate these tests, which, in some way, can (or cannot) facilitate the access to education and transformation of all of the involved in the social practice.