Having in mind that, in the composition tests applied by the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), it is required the writing of a textual genre (opinion article and experience report, UFCG 2005; testimony and report letter, UFCG 2006; review and talk, UFCG 2007; comparative analysis of the two poems and documentary, UFCG 2008) and that each candidate who takes the exam has a particular literacy history (lh), this article has two objectives: (1) to check the literacy practices required in the writing of the talk proposed in the composition test applied at the college entrance exams for the Federal University of Campina Grande, in the year 2007 and (2) to analyse the relationship between the mobilization of literacy practices, both in the talks and in the candidates' lh. this research is descriptive-interpretative, of qualitative nature, whose corpus was composed of four data sets, namely: (1) a composition test applied at the college entrance exams, held at the Federal University of Campina Grande in 2007; (2) samples of talks produced during these exams; (3) a socioeconomic and cultural questionnaire answered by the candidates, and (4) a semi-structured interview done with them. the data, analysed on the basis of present-day studies on literacy (cf. BARTON & HAMILTON, 2000; GEE, 2000; MEY, 2001; BAZERMAN, 2007), show the presence of multiliteracy in the test, and also indicate that the candidates' lh seems to be a decisive factor for the mobilization of literacy practices in the writing of talks. the candidates who demonstrated the practices required by the college entrance examination were probably familiar with literacy events whose practices were similar to those required by the event present in the exam paper, whereas those who did not perform them well may have had more experience with school literacy. Thus, the results have shown that school practices appear to be insufficient for the candidates to demonstrate the multiliterate practices required by the exam.
talks; literate practices; literacy history