This document describes the development of a test to evaluate university students' English reading skills. It consists of three progressively difficult sections that assess reading speed and comprehension. The test examines skills from rapid reading to careful analysis. It was created based on research in reading strategies and validated by experts. Contact information is provided for those interested in the full exam.

1. UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE TLAXCALA
XIII ENCUENTRO NACIONAL DE ESTUDIOS EN LENGUAS
El diagnóstico de la lectura académica en inglés
Gabriel Garduño Moreno
Carmen Gómez Pezuela Reyes
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco

2. Objetivo
 Ofrecer un instrumento que permita evaluar el nivel de
dominio de estrategias de lectura y de vocabulario de
estudiantes a nivel universitario.
 Evaluar el nivel de desempeño que va desde la
comprensión expedita hasta la comprensión cuidadosa
de un texto.
 Satisfacer necesidades específicas de la institución.

3.  La prueba se compone de tres diferentes bandas cuyos
reactivos están graduados y ordenados
progresivamente.
 El nivel de dificultad de cada una de las bandas es
mayor conforme se avanza en la resolución del examen.

4. Lectura expedita
 Inspección rápida de un texto
 Global: se centra en determinadas secciones del texto
(palabras, ideas tópicas o párrafos importantes) y construye
la macroestructura (Kintsch y Dijk, 1983)
 la lectura selectiva o skimming
 lectura de búsqueda o search reading
 Local
 lectura de ojeada o scanning.

5. Lectura cuidadosa
 Procesamiento en paralelo: ascendente (de lo impreso a lo
conceptual) y descendente (de lo conceptual a lo impreso).
 Global( macroproposicional)
 Diferenciar ideas principales de secundarias; obtener una
representación del texto como una totalidad; seguir el
desarrollo de un argumento y visualizar su organización lógica.
 comprender información implícita como inferir la intención del
autor, percibir su actitud ante el tema tratado y diferenciar
hechos y opiniones.
 Local (microproposicional). Inferir significado léxicos,
comprender y reconocer la estructura sintáctica de los
enunciados.

9. Banda 1
SPECIAL EFFECTS
[…] Even realistic movies can benefit from this technology. In Forrest Gump, a handful of extras
were digitally expanded into a cast of thousands. In the ultra­realistic Holocaust drama, The
Pianist, the events take place during the World War II era, yet director Roman Polanski used CGI
for several scenes—the bombed­out ruins of a city street, a character falling from a tall building,
air­craft streaking across the skies. Traditional animation, with its time­consuming, hand­drawn Cel
images, is being replaced by computers, which produce images that are created digitally, not á
mano. CGI has produced a new "look" in animation, less detailed, more sculptural, more
plastique like the streamlined images of Shrek, The Polar Express, and The Incredibles. Acting has
also been affected by this technology, though not usually in a positive way. In Star Wars, for
example, actors often performed in front of F/X bluescreens rather than with other actors, who
were later digitally added to the shot by computer technicians. Some critics have complained
that such acting is often cold and mechanical, with none of the human subtleties that can be
found in scenes where performers are actually interacting. Digital editing is also much easier than
traditional methods. Instead of handling a physical filmstrip and making actual cuts, modern
editors need only to press a button to cut from one shot to another.
3. ¿Qué aspecto de la tecnología CGI se considera como una desventaja?
a) El proceso de elaboración
b) El precio de producción
c) El demérito actoral

10. Banda 2
THE TRAGEDY OF THE AMERICAN INDIOS
The tragic effects of contact between white Europeans —whether conquerors, colonists,
explorers, or sailors —, and the indigenous populations of the New World, the Pacific, and
Oceania were evident from the time of the earliest explorations. Historical documentation is
abundant, and we have only to choose our examples. As is well known, Columbus landed in
Santo Domingo (christened at the time Hispaniola) in 1492. The number of inhabitants at the time
is of course unknown, but it seemed densely populated to the first visitors, “like the countryside of
Córdoba”. Authors writing a quarter of a century or so later report an original population of one
million or more, supposedly counted by Columbus or his brother Bartolome in 1495 or 1496 when
they tried to impose a gold tribute on the natives. Las Casas —the colonist who became a
Dominican friar and staunch defender of the Indios—, would eventually increased this number to
3 or 4 million. Modern scholars, since the 1950s, give estimates as widely different as 60,000 and 8
million. Recent estimates, following different strategies seem to point to a contact population of
200,000­300,000 people, subdivided into several hundred communities, each headed by a
cacique.
12. Originalmente, Las Casas era un …
a) conquistador.
a) fraile dominico.
c) defensor de indios.

11. Banda 3
ORIGIN OF MODERN HUMANS
[…]Perhaps the greatest controversy in studies of human evolution concerns the origins of
modern humans and our relationship with the first fossils discovered that bear on this question —
the neanderthals. Two main hypotheses have been put forth. The ‘multiregional model’ proposes
that modern humans arose independently in different regions of the world, with sufficient gene
flow between the regions to maintain the unity of the species, and share a most recent common
ancestor who lived over one million years ago. The ‘recent replacement model’, in contrast,
proposes that a single population, most likely of African origin, expanded and replaced archaic
populations throughout the world, beginning around 200,000 years ago.
21. Estudios de ADN mitocondrial apoyan el modelo o la teoría …
a) multiregional.
b) del remplazo.
c) autosómico.

12. Elaboración
 Análisis de necesidades
 Especificaciones de examen
 Selección de los textos
 Elaboración de los reactivos.
 Validación de contenidos de la prueba
 Davies (1977); Alderson (1998); Weir et al (2000)

13.  La versión completa del examen: ponerse en contacto con
los autores a las siguientes direcciones electrónicas:
 jgarduno@correo.xoc.uam.mx
 mpezuela@correo.xoc.uam.mx