Carta do Editor

Abstract

I introduce readers to the second issue of the Revista Brasileira de Lingüística Aplicada 7th volume with immense pleasure. The ten articles compiled in the issue you have in your hands cover a broad array of topics and themes, converse with a variety of other texts and theoretical frames, and report studies oriented by a number of different methodologies and modes of knowledge production. Therefore, they are illustrations of the vivid activity of the Brazilian Applied Linguistics scholarly community, and they reflect the discipline's wealth and the diversity of vantage points held by its practitioners in their contemplations of language-related problems. The issue is opened with a contribution by Jaçanã Ribeiro. The author reflects about educational policy plans that target indigenous students. Through an analysis of the document "Referencial Curricular Nacional para as Escolas Indígenas", Ribeiro problematizes the pedagogical proposals for reading and writing put forward in the document, employing the notion of writing and power. The article guides us into considerations of the problem of the cultural specificity of literate practices vis-à-vis the multiculturalism that typifies indigenous education. Assessment is the focus in the next two papers in this issue. The paper authored by Laura Miccoli and Cristina Porto discusses a part of a case study that prompted the emergence of experiences of three English language teachers in the tertiary education context. In this article, we are led to consider that because assessment requires specialized knowledge not fully widespread among foreign language teachers, it is a component of pedagogical practice whose challenges are yet to be met if assessment is to be re-signified by students and teachers as a relevant aspect of teaching and learning. The third paper in the issue, by Celso Tumolo and Leda Tomitch, offers an analysis of test items for the assessment of EFL reading skills in light of a discussion of construct validity. The authors rely on an interpretive investigation procedure to look at construct validity of reading comprehension tests and make considerations that aim at contributing with guidelines for the design of more reliable assessment instruments. Another theme focused on in the current issue by way of two distinct contributions is the question of teachers' beliefs. The first of such papers, by Márcia Carazzai and Glória Gil, discusses the results of an empirical qualitative study that delved into the beliefs of an EFL teacher and their