Analyzing a test as genre: Critical Genre Analysis of the English language ENEM

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a Critical Genre Analysis (CGA) (Motta-Roth, 2006; 2008a; 2008b) of the English Language test on the Brazilian National High School Exam (EL-ENEM), to, ultimately, discuss the language conception that underlies this test. The corpus of the analysis was composed of eight samples of the EL-ENEM genre. The results point out that EL-ENEM items provide the test takers with a contextualization about their reference texts. This contextualization, in most items, provide information regarding the genres of the reference texts. The items, then, demand the test takers to identify different types of information in the reference texts. The types of information that are demanded the most refer to the text’s content, objective, and topic. This way, the test takers must activate knowledge related to Semantics and Pragmatics, Register (context of situation) and Genre (context of culture), indicating a direction to the view of language as genre, adopted by the official documents that guide ENEM’s design.

摘要 本文针对巴西全国高中会考英语科目测试（EL-ENEM）开展批评体裁分析（Critical Genre Analysis，CGA，Motta-Roth, 2006; 2008a; 2008b），最终探讨该测试所依托的语言观念。本分析的语料由8份EL-ENEM体裁样本构成。分析结果表明，EL-ENEM试题会为应试者提供参考文本的相关语境信息；在多数试题中，该语境信息会涵盖参考文本的体裁类别。随后，试题要求应试者识别参考文本中的各类信息，其中占比最高的信息类型为文本内容、文本目的与文本主题。据此，应试者需激活与语义学（Semantics）、语用学（Pragmatics）、语域（Register，情境语境）及体裁（Genre，文化语境）相关的知识，这指向了指导ENEM命题的官方文件所采用的"语言即体裁"的语言观。