OJER Home

2021 - Volume 5 - Number 1

The TOEFL as Exit Criteria in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Programs in Mexico: A Discourse Historical Analysis (DHA) Approach

Isaac Frausto Hernandez * ifraustohe@miners.utep.edu * ORCID: 0000-0001-9984-7962
University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Education, UNITED STATES

Open Journal for Educational Research, 2021, 5(1), 105-118 * https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojer.0501.09105h
Received: 3 March 2021 ▪ Accepted: 4 June 2021 ▪ Published Online: 11 July 2021

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this article is to explore the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) assessment under its Institutional Testing Program (ITP) modality as it acts as a curriculum artifact along Mexican undergraduate degree programs considered within the exit criteria. A discourse historical approach (DHA) (Wodak, 2008; Wodak & Meyer, 2009) is taken in analyzing the TOEFL ITP assessment to further understand its implementation. The analysis helps reveal the many linguistic and metalinguistic skills and elements that extend beyond what may be traditionally taught in English courses or programs. The analysis also calls for further questioning of how suitable the TOEFL ITP may be in aiming to assess the proficiency level or development of English learners along undergraduate degrees in Mexico. Alternative types of assessment may better aid in providing a different perspective on the knowledge or progress of these students.

KEY WORDS: TOEFL, assessment, curriculum artifact, discourse historical approach, English as a Foreign Language.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Isaac Frausto Hernandez, University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Education, UNITED STATES. E-mail: ifraustohe@miners.utep.edu.

REFERENCES:

Ananda, R. (2016). Problems with section two ITP TOEFL test. Studies in English Language and Education, 3(1). 35-49. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v3i1.3387

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford University Press.

Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford University Press.

Bobbitt, J. F. (1918). The curriculum. Macmillan.

Brown, J. D. (2005). Testing in language programs: A comprehensive guide to testing language assessment. McGraw-Hill.

Brown, J. D., & Hudson, T. (2002). Criterion-referenced language testing. Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.

Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford University Press.

Charters, W. W. (1923). Curriculum construction. Macmillan.

Charters, W. W. (1927). How to teach ideals. Methodist Publishing House.

Charters, W. W. (1928). The teaching of ideals. Macmillan.

Cohen, L. (1999) Philosophical perspectives in education. http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/PP3.html.

Cook, G. (1989). Discourse. Oxford University Press.

Cook, G. (2003). Applied linguistics. Oxford University Press.

Corsetti, C. R. (2010). Pragmatic competence in the listening paper of the certificate of proficiency in English. BELT Journal, 1(1), 14-25.

Council of Europe (2001). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, and assessment. Language Policy Division.

Crystal, D. (2008). A dictionary of linguistic and phonetics. Blackwell Publishing.

Dechant, E. (1991). Understanding and teaching reading: An interactive model. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Díaz Barriga, A. (1999). La flexibilización profesional y su impacto en los planes de estudio. Paper presented at the 5th Congreso Nacional de Investigación Educativa, Consejo Mexicano de Investigación Educativa, Aguascalientes.

Díaz Barriga, A. (2003). Curriculum research: Evolution and outlook in Mexico. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research (pp. 443-456). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Díaz Barriga, F. (2003). Main trends of curriculum research in Mexico. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.). International handbook of curriculum research (pp. 457-470). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Educational Testing Service (ETS). (2011). TOEFL program history. TOEFL iBT Research Insight Series. 6. http://www.ets.org/s/toefl/pdf/toefl_ibt_insight_s1v6.pdf.

Educational Testing Service (ETS) (2017). TOEFL ITP Test Taker Handbook. New Jersey.

Ellis, R. (1993). The structural syllabus and Second Language Acquisition. TESOL Quarterly, 27(1), 91-113.

Enright, M. K., Grabe, W., Koda, K. Mosenthal, P. B., Mulcahy-Ernt, P., & Schedl, M. A. (2000, March 01). TOEFL 2000 Reading Framework: A Working Paper (Report No. RM-00-04). https://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publications/report/2000/iciv.

Fraser, B. (1999). What are discourse markers? Journal of Pragmatics, 31, 931-952.

Freedle, R., & Kostin, I. (1993). The prediction of TOEFL reading item difficulty: Implications for construct validity. Language Testing, 10, 133-170. https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229301000203.

Garcia, P. (2004). Pragmatic comprehension of high and low level language learners. TESL-EJ, 8(2), 1-15.

Greenbaum, S. (1996) The Oxford English grammar. Oxford University Press.

Hoey, M. (1991). Patterns of lexis in text. Oxford University Press.

Holmes, J. (2008). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Pearson Education Limited.

Hung, T. T. N. (2003). How linguistics can contribute to the teaching of grammar. In J. E. James (Ed.), Grammar in the language classroom (pp. 41-61). SEAMEO Regional Language Center.

Jennings, M., Fox, J., Graves, B., & Shohamy, E. (1999). The test-takers choice: an investigation of the effect of topic on language-test performance. Language Testing, 16(4), 426-456. https://doi.org/10.1177/026553229901600402.

Jung, J. Y. (2001). Issues in acquisitional pragmatics. TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 2(3), 1-13.

Kachru, B. B. (1982). The other tongue. English across cultures. University of Illinois Press.

Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification, and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk, & H. Widdowson (Eds.). English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and the literature. Cambridge University Press.

Karbalaei, A., & Rahmanzade, M. K. (2015). An investigation into pragmatic knowledge in the reading section of TOLIMO, TOEFL, and IELTS examinations. English Language Teaching, 8(5), 208-221. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v8n5p208

Kridel, C. (Ed.). (2010). Social efficiency tradition. In Encyclopedia of curriculum studies (pp. 789-791). SAGE.

Ku, Y. L. K. (2009). Assessing students’ critical thinking performance: Urging for measurements using multi-response format. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4, 70-76.

Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness: Or minding your p’s and q’s. Chicago Linguistic Society, 9, 292-305.

Lemke, J. L. (1995). Textual politics. Taylor & Francis.

Null, W. (2011). Curriculum: From theory to practice. Rowman & Littlefield.

Nissan, S., DeVincenzi, F., & Tang, K. L. (1996). An analysis of factors affecting the difficulty of dialogue items in TOEFL listening comprehension. [Educational Testing Service] Research Reports, 51(February), 1-42.

Norton Pierce, B. (1992). Demystifying the TOEFL. TESOL Quarterly, 26(4). 665-691. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3586868. 
Nunan, D. (1988). Syllabus design. Oxford University Press.

Odlin, T. (1994). Perspectives on pedagogical grammar. Cambridge University Press.

Rahimpour, M. (2010). Current trends on syllabus design in foreign language instruction. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 1660-1664.

Paul, R. W. (1985). Bloom’s taxonomy and critical thinking intervention. Educational Leadership, 42(8), 36–39.

Pithers, R. T., & Soden, R. (2000). Critical thinking in education: A review. Educational Research, 42, 237-249.

Quinn, N., & Holland, D. (1987). Cultural models in thought and language. Cambridge University Press.

Ravitch, D. (1995). National standards in American education: A citizen’s guide. Brookings Institution Press.

Richards, J. C. (2013). Curriculum approaches in language teaching: Forward, central, and backward design. RELC, 44(1), 5-33. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688212473293

Schiro, M. (1978). Curriculum for better schools: The great ideological debate. Financial Times/Prentice Hall.

Shaw, L. (1995) Humanistic and social aspects of teaching. http://edweb.sdsu.edu/LShaw/f95syll/philos/phbehav.html.

Sheorey, R., & Mokhtari, K. (2001). Differences in the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among native and non-native readers. System, 29, 431-449.

Tan, P. (1994). Key concepts in ELT. ELT Journal, 48(1), 100.

Wardhaugh, R. (2008). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Blackwell.

Wardhaugh, R., & Fuller, J.M. (2015). An introduction to sociolinguistics (7th Ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

White, R. V. (1988). The ELT Curriculum. Blackwell Publishers.

Wiggins G., & McTighe, J. (2006). Understanding by design: A framework for effecting curricular development and assessment. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Wodak, R. (2004). The discourse historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 63-94). Sage.

Wodak, R. (2008). Introduction: Discourse studies: Important concepts and terms. In R. Wodak & M. Krzyżanowski (Eds.), Qualitative discourse analysis in the social sciences (pp. 1-29). Palgrave Macmillan.

Wodak, R., & Fairclough, N. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258-284). Sage.

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2009). Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. In R. Wodak, & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods for critical discourse analysis (2nd ed., pp. 1-33). Sage.

Yule, G. (2000). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

Yule, G., & Brown, G. (1989). Discourse analysis. Cambridge University Press.