It aims to analyze in a quantitative e qualitative way the avaluation of Spanish as a Foreign Language reading comprehension in Northern Brazil University entrance examinations, to be able to prove the types of reading operations – and, therefore, of models – favored in the tests analyzed; to establish a relationship between the collected tests and their underlying didactic conceptions; to identify some problems in the test items based on a series of quality parameters; to analyze the validity of the selected tests; and to detect possible differences between the examinations elaborated by public and private Higher Education Institutions. This analysis demonstrates, on the one hand, a tendency to prioritize bottom-up reading models, with the subsequent valuation of low level cognitive operations and lexicalgrammatical aspects of language, as a consequence of a didactic reading conception based on a Structuralist approach. On the other hand, this study shows the existence of serious deficiencies in the University entrance examination items, which affect their validity.
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