Resumo em Inglês:

This article presents a state of the art review of the literature on the concept of washback in the context of language teaching. The concept, despite been frequently used in the international educational literature and in Applied Linguistics, is not well understood, as it does not seem to have been part of the research agenda for many years. After terminological and conceptual considerations, the article discusses recent empirical contributions, controversial aspects as well as those deserving more careful treatment in future research.

Resumo em Inglês:

Teachers' discourse on evaluation is focused in the framework of a process of institutional quality management, an outcome of the neoliberal project that is pervading educational contexts. From a Discourse Analysis' perspective, the conditions for the production and the materiality of the discourse produced during a staff meeting are discussed in terms of the effects of the pervasiveness of neoliberal concepts, notions and principles on power-knowledge relationships.

Resumo em Inglês:

In this paper I discuss some representations of oral evaluation in the learning of English as a Foreign Language (FL) in a Brazilian undergraduate institution for FL teachers. My analysis includes questions and concepts from applied linguistics, discourse analysis and psychoanalysis. In this perspective, subjectivity is constituent of discourse; subject-teachers take contradictory positions during the assessment of their students' learning process. These positions are characterized as gestures of interpretation because they answer demands, in this case, from scientific, technical, juridical and political/transferencial voices. The corpus was constructed with discursive practices of teachers and students at the end of a 4 year-course of study. In my analysis, I use the concept of Discursive Formations (DF), understood as enunciative regularities within a field of knowledge. I take as themes the elements of traditional oral evaluation, such as fluency and pronunciation, and representations of communicative competence/proficiency. As a result, I show that, in the process of assessment, people take stands within DFs that I have named “Including” and “Excluding”, as well as some of its modulations, “Unconditional inclusion”, and “Excluding perfection”. The “Excluding” DF is characterized by the representation of perfection which contradictorily excludes both the students' fault and excellence. The “Inclusive” DF accepts the student's faults and progress, turning relative their performance. In this DF a progress and a passing grade above an abstract minimum are guaranteed to all or most students.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article presents a theoretical background and some results from a research project that aimed at investigating the issue of EFL teacher's oral language proficiency (OLP-EFLT) in contexts of English Language and Literature undergraduate courses (Licenciatura em Letras, henceforth Letter courses) in Brazil.The project analyses OLP-EFLT from the perspective of students' and teachers' views and expectations about OLP in English and by means of a language test.The Test of Oral Proficiency English, labelled as TEPOLI (Teste de Proficiência Oral em Língua Inglesa), designed as a research instrument, was taken by graduating students from three Letters courses in two consecutive years. The data presented here derive from results and transcripts of TEPOLI concerning one of the contexts investigated. Such results contribute for a definition of the characteristics of OLP-EFLT, especially among graduating students of Letters, and the design of an oral test to assess their OLP. However, the investigation indicates the needs for further research on linguistic aspects and oral tasks that are more representative of OLP-EFLT. The theoretical and methodological aspects dealt with here may nevertheless motivate future work in the issue of teachers' language proficiency and how to make valid and reliable claims about OLP-EFLT.

Resumo em Inglês:

This paper is based on my master dissertation in which I investigated the washback effect of a university entrance exam on the teaching of the English language in four different high schools in Brasília. The methodology of the study, which focused on the practice of six English teachers, triangulates data from classroom observations, interviews with teachers and their responses to questionnaires, analyses of exam samples and the exam program. The results show that there is a slight washback effect on the course content and lesson planning, classroom materials and evaluation procedures. Evidence of washback effect is not found on either the language teaching approach or methodological procedures.

Resumo em Inglês:

This article presents the results of a study involving a group of teachers of Portuguese enrolled in a special course for continuing education offered at the campus of Dourados of the Federal University of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil (UFMS). The research investigated the relationship between the classroom practices of the teachers and the methodology advocated in the course of Methodology of Text Production, especially in relation to the dialogue between writing / rewriting and the correction of texts. The results identify some of the issues involved in the teaching of text production which are of special concern to these teachers during daily classroom activities. These were reflected in the conflicts revealed by the subjects about classroom teaching when they were challenged not only to act and interact but to reflect on their own history of teaching and learning in relation to text production.