Assessing English in South America
This chapter presents a brief state-of-the-art description of English language teaching and assessment in South America, placing special focus on Brazil and Argentina. There is reference to developments in Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia. The chapter focuses on the status of the English language in the official education network—taking into consideration the goals and approaches at each of the levels of the educational systems—as well as on assessment practices in public and private schools. There are great challenges for the democratization of quality English teaching, and the role of assessment is vital in this process. In order to overcome the challenges identified, there is a need to raise teachers’ awareness of the role and power of assessment in general practices and to implement measures in order to increase the level of proficiency among teachers and the quality of their education. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
Assessment evaluation; 
Assessment methods; 
ESL/EFL; 
South America
Teacher Socialization of EFL Teachers at Public School Levels in Central Mexico
This study aimed at exploring the processes of teacher socialization and identity formation of nine English as a foreign language teachers at public schools in central Mexico. These teachers began their careers in the National English Program in Basic Education. Qualitative research and narrative inquiry were used as a basis for this research. The data revealed that the teachers’ socialization was somewhat informal in that little was required from them to gain entrance into the program. Once teaching, the participants dealt with challenges in their teaching contexts and the program. From these challenges, the teachers were able to make decisions concerning their future as teachers, forming and imagining their identity.
Performativity and Language Studies
Drawing analogies with the crisis in understandings of culture that led to the development of cultural studies, I suggest in this article that a similar crisis in the understanding of language may give an important impetus to the development of language studies. Arguing for the need to rethink the notion of language as commonly formulated in linguistics and applied linguistics, I take up the notion of performativity as a way of thinking about language use and identity that avoids foundationalist categories, suggesting that identities are formed in the linguistic performance rather than pregiven. Such a view of language identity also helps us to see how subjectivities are called into being and sedimented over time through regulated language acts. This further provides the ground for considering languages themselves from an anti-foundationalist perspective, whereby language use is an act of identity that calls that language into being. And performativity, particularly in its relationship to notions of performance, opens up ways to understand how languages, identities and futures are refashioned.