A Study On The Washback Of Cet-4 Listening Test On College English Listening Learning

Washback is an important term refers to the influence of testing on teaching and learning. It has become a focus in language testing, language teaching and learning fields. In the past decade, it has attracted more and more attentions of language test designers and researchers. A huge bulk of theoretical and empirical researches have been done on washback in foreign countries; whereas in China, the domestic research on washback is a relatively new area in the field of language testing and very little empirical research has been conducted.CET4 is considered as a large-scale foreign language test in China. Based on the newly-issued National Curriculum Requirements for College English (2004), the CET-4 was innovated in 2006 by Higher Education Ministry. The innovated CET-4 has been carried out nationwide since 2007, highlighting the abilities of listening and speaking. Among all the revised and reformed items, the great change is about the listening part. The weight of the listening test has been increased from 20% to 35% and the test formats become more various. Thus, the importance of listening is obvious, especially for the college English teaching and learning. However, the domestic research on the washback of CET-4 listening test is only in the primary phrase.Based on the Washback Hypotheses raised by Alderson & Wall, this paper focus on the non-English major students and their listening learning practice, intends to study the washback of current CET-4 listening test from an empirical view by referring to the prior researches from both foreign and domestic scholars. The present study is meant to find out CET-4 listening test washback on college English listening learning, to advance some suggestions accordingly in the hope of fully taking advantage of the positive washback of this test while minimizing its negative washback, hoping to provide reference for improving listening learning efficiency, college English listening teaching quality and the innovation of CET-4 listening test itself. Data were collected from 193 non-English major students in Guangxi Normal University through questionnaire, classroom observation and interviews, combing qualitative and quantitative research methods.The findings indicate that the current CET-4 listening test exerts strong washback on students'listening learning, mainly reflects in the listening learning objectives, contents, attitudes, methods and preparation for the CET-4 listening test. Overall, the positive washback outweigh negative one. To a great degree, the CET-4 listening test helps students'realize the importance of listening learning, correct their attitudes toward it, clarify objectives according to their actual listening performance and intensify their goal consciously. Through the preparation for CET-4 listening test, students can find their strengths and weaknesses in their listening learning, then adjust their listening methods more specifically, which can apparently improve students'enthusiasm and initiative of listening learning. Furthermore, CET-4 listening test has positive washback on the improvement of students'abilities of reading and writing, and on the enlargement of their vocabularies. However, the negative aspects of this test should not be ignored. Most students consider that the test preparation takes them much time away from the time for other language skills, the test contents are far away form their real life and the current CET-4 listening test imposes students suffer from great pressure with its increased difficulty.