Text V

Language Assessment and the new Literacy Studies

Some Final Remarks

    Planning language assessment from a structuralist view of language has been a fairly easy task, since it aims at testing the correct use of grammar and lexical structures. This has been a very comfortable way to evaluate students’ performance in many regular schools or language institutes due to the stability of standardized answers. From the perspective of the new literacy studies, the comfort of teaching and assessing objective and homogeneous linguistic contents is replaced by a wider spectrum of language teaching and assessing possibilities, whose key elements turn to be difference and critique. Typical activities based on this new approach would enable students to make and negotiate meanings in a much more flexible way, corroborating the novel notion of unstable, dynamic, collaborative and distributed knowledge.

    The inclusion of contents of such nature in language assessments may be, at a first glance, a very laborious process due to the fact we are simply not accustomed to that. Actually, we sometimes find ourselves deprived from the teaching skills necessary to apply a more critical teaching approach, a fact that is much the results of our positivist educational background.

    Nonetheless, since the emergent digital epistemology will require subject more capable of designing and redesigning meaning critically towards a great deal of representational modes, we need to reconsider our teaching approaches, go further and seek theories that take such issues into account. By redefining the notions of language and knowledge, we, thus, assume that the new literacy studies from the last decades may offer very good insights to the field of foreign language teaching.

    The re-conceptualization of language assessment according to the new literacies project presented in this paper does not intend to suggest prompt fixed answers, but it takes the risk of outlining possible activities, signaling certain changes regarding its characteristics and contents, as previously shared.

    The increasing importance of the new literacy and multiliteracies studies and their fruitful theoretical insight for the rethinking of pedagogical issues invite us to review our foreign language teaching practices in a different perspective. By sharing some of our local findings, we attempt to corroborate the collaborative and distributed knowledge discussed by the literacies theory itself and hope to be contributing to the new educational demands of the emerging epistemological basis.

From: DUBOC, A.P.M. Language Assessment and the new Literacy Studies. Lenguaje 37 (1), 2009. pp. 159-178, p. 175-176.

Text I

Nurturing Multimodalism

    […]

   New learning collaborations call on the teacher as learner, and the learner as teacher. The teacher is a lifelong learner; this is simply more apparent in the Information Age. In instances of best practice, collaborative learning partnerships are forged between and among teachers for strategic, bottom-up, in-house professional development. This allows teachers to share in reflective, on-going, contextualized learning, tailored to their collective knowledge. This sharing also includes the learner as teacher. ELT typically employs learner-centered activities: these can include learners sharing their knowledge of strategic digital literacies with others in the classrooms.

   The digital universe, so threatening to adult notions of socially sanctioned literacies, is intuitive to children, who have been socialized into it, and for whom digital literacies are exploratory play. Adults may find new ways of communicating digitally to be quite baffling and confronting of our communicative expertise; children do not. Instant messaging systems, such as MSN, AOL, ICQ, for example, provide as natural a medium for communicating to them as telephones did for the baby-boomer generation. It is not fair for the teacher to treat Information and Communication Technologies as auxiliary communication with learners for whom it is mainstream and primary.

    Learning spaces are important. Although teachers seldom have much individual say in the layout of teaching spaces, collaborative relationships may help to encourage integrated digitization, where computers are not segregated in laboratories but are interspersed throughout the school environment. In digitally infused curricula, postmodern literacies do not supplant but complement modern literacies, so that access to information is driven by purpose and content rather than by the media available.

Adapted from: LOTHERINGTON, H. From literacy to multiliteracies in ELT. In: CUMMINS, J.; DAVISON, C. (Eds.) International Handbook of English Language Teaching. New York: Springer, 2007, p. 820. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226802846_From_Literacy_to_Multiliter acies_in_ELT 

TEXTIV- Text forquestion

QUOTATION

“Another important characteristic of the [National Curricular] Parameters that should not be overlooked is their emphasis on teacher's autonomy. This emphasis can be seen clearly in the fact that no content or method is imposed upon the teachers. What one can find are suggestions and relevant information for teachers to make their own decisions, taking into consideration the context within which they work. In other words, the Parameters do not force any teacher to limit their focus on the teaching of reading, if they believe they can go further than that” (ALMEIDA, 2012, p. 334).

(Source: ALMEIDA, Ricardo Luiz Teixeira de. The teaching of English as a foreign language in the context of Brazilian regular schools: a retrospective and prospective view of policies and practices. In: Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, Belo Horizonte, v. 12, nº 2, June, 2012, p. 331-348. Available at: th https://www.scielo.br/j/rbla/a/nNz3Jtj85xmms8MnNfwRpMn/?format=pdf&lang=en. Accessed on April 20 , 2022).

What is the cycle tourism?

Cycle tourism, cycle travelling, bike tourism… Many names for the same big passion. The cycle tourism is a form of tourism by bicycle that seems to gain ________ more attention even ________ people who are not passionate cyclists.

Who decide to travel by bike are not interested in getting fit, in how long takes to get to a place and in the athletic training: on the contrary the cycle tourism is a way of travelling that allow people to get to know places and people with a more human pace, not just to visit places but above all to live your destinations.

You can travel by bicycle for a few days or also for a few weeks, to go for a day tour or for a weekend in an art city for instance. The advantages of cycle tourism are many; the very reasonable travelling costs, more freedom in planning your trip even when travelling, more authentic way of travelling and exploring and the chance to do something for the environment.

Like many other forms of eco-sustainable tourism, the cycle tourism is convenient, it is good for your spirit and the planet!

(Fonte: Bikenbike - adaptado.)

Instruction: Answer to questions 38 to 47 based on the text below. The Highlights throughout the text are cited in the questions.

Caribou

01 ____Large hoofed animals belonging to the deer family, caribou and reindeer are actually the

02 same species — Rangifer tarandus. There are differences between caribou and reindeer though.

03 Caribou are native to North America, whereas reindeer are native to northern Europe and Asia.

04 Alaska does have some reindeer, however, imported from Siberia in the late 19th and early 20th

05 centuries.

06 ____Some people use the term "reindeer" to refer to domesticated work animals, such as those

07 pulling Santa's sleigh, but there are both wild and domestic herds of reindeer. Caribou, on the

08 other hand, are wild-living and long-migrating. Indigenous groups herd reindeer and use them for

09 their meat. That's also likely why reindeer evolved to be stockier than caribou.

10 ____Caribou make one of the world's great large-animal migrations. As summer approaches,

11 they head north along well-trod annual routes. Some herds may travel more than 600 miles to

12 get to their summer grazing grounds. They'll spend the summer months feeding on the abundant

13 grasses and plants of the tundra. This is also when they give birth. When the first snows fall each

14 year, the caribou turn back south. Herds of female caribou, called cows, leave several weeks

15 before the males, which follow with yearling calves from the previous birthing season.

16 ____They are taller and lankier than reindeer, likely because they evolved to make these long

17 migrations. They are the only deer in which males and females both have antlers—though only

18 some females have them. Cows have one calf each year, which can stand after only a few minutes

19 and move on with its mother by the next day.

20 ____Caribou are classified as vulnerable to extinction, one step above endangered. Because

21 they're migratory, changes in the landscape, such as the appearance of new fences or other

22 human development on their migration routes, can be especially disruptive. Climate change is

23 also a threat. As the Arctic warms, they become more susceptible to diseases and parasites,

24 which could quickly spread through a herd.

(Available in: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/caribou – text adapted especially

for this test).

Instruction: answer questions 51 to 58 based on the following text.

Eve Rodsky’s deck of cards could help you find domestic bliss

1. Eve Rodsky was fed up. For years she, like many other women, had shouldered the burden
2. of invisible labor at home. Rodsky, a Harvard-educated lawyer and organizational management
3. specialist who advises families and charitable foundations, was tired of being the “she-fault”
4. parent. So, she started a spreadsheet titled “Shit I do.” “After months and months of
5. crowdsourcing this beautiful, giant spreadsheet, I sent this to my husband and said, ‘Can’t wait
6. to discuss.'”
7. Rodsky shared the spreadsheet on Facebook. Soon, she was receiving messages from
8. strangers who had seen it, detailing the domestic indignities they faced. She wanted to channel
9. that frustration into something productive, and then Rodsky realized she could apply
10. organizational management principles to the home. When Sarah Harden, the CEO of the media
11. and production company Hello Sunshine, met Rodsky, she realized Rodsky was onto something
12. novel. “After 40 to 50 years of talking about the problems, she was working on a solution. [At
13. Hello Sunshine], (...) We like to be on the problem-solving end of the conversation rather than
14. wallowing” said Harden.
15. The result is Rodsky’s book, Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too
16. Much to Do (and More Life to Live), which came out in October. (Hello Sunshine inked a unique
17. deal with Rodsky as a venture partner, which means the company helped sell the book to a
18. publisher and will take a cut of its profits.) A key piece of Rodsky’s solution is gamifying the
19. notion of fair play with a set of cards. “So this is based on a 100 card game. You’re holding cards
20. that represent all that you do for your home and family.”
21. The author believes the cards can help couples navigate their domestic balance by helping
22. them to talk about home life (which most people don’t do) and take full ownership of the tasks
23. (concept, planning, and execution). The ultimate goal of redistributing domestic work, according
24. to Rodsky, is to free up time for what she calls “unicorn space” — the stuff that might feel like a
25. luxury or pipe dream to most parents. “This is about making time for the things we actually care
26. about — who we were before we had kids,” she said. “What are our passions and purpose,
27. beyond being a parent and a partner and a worker? The more we spend time arguing about who
28. does what, the less time we have for the things that truly matter.”

Adapted from: https://www.fastcompany.com/90425669/eve-rodskys-deck-of-cards-could-help-you-find-domestic-bliss

Leia o texto a seguir e responda as questões de 30 a 40:

We crowded round, and over Miss Cathy's head I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk: indeed, its face looked older than Catherine's; yet when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad? The master tried to explain the matter; but he was really half dead with fatigue, and all that I could make out, amongst her scolding, was a tale of his seeing it starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets of Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it belonged, he said; and his money and time being both limited, he thought it better to take it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses there: because he was determined he would not leave it as he found it. Well, the conclusion was, that my mistress grumbled herself calm; and Mr. Earnshaw told me to wash it, and give it clean things, and let it sleep with the children.

Hindley and Cathy contented themselves with looking and listening till peace was restored: then, both began searching their father's pockets for the presents he had promised them. The former was a boy of fourteen, but when he drew out what had been a fiddle, crushed to morsels in the great-coat, he blubbered aloud; and Cathy, when she learned the master had lost her whip in attending on the stranger, showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing; earning for her pains a sound blow from her father, to teach her cleaner manners. They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might he gone on the morrow. By chance, or else attracted by hearing his voice, it crept to Mr. Earnshaw's door, and there he found it on quitting his chamber. Inquiries were made as to how it got there; I was obliged to confess, and in recompense for my cowardice and inhumanity was sent out of the house.

BRONTE, Emily. Wuthering Heights. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847