National Matriculation English Test And Its Backwash Effects

As an inseparable part of language teaching, language testing will either foster or impede language teaching, depending on whether it is appropriately employed or not. National Matriculation English Test (NMET), an important component of National Matriculation Tests (NMTs), is one of the most influential language tests which boasts an annual testing population of millions. It exerts tremendous impact on high school teaching and learning in China. For this reason, a detailed analysis of NMETs has been conducted, to spot the positive changes throughout its development and the present challenges it faces. At the same time, the writer has carried out a survey among high school English teachers and students, exploiting the research methods of questionnaires, interviews and class observation, in the hope that she might be able to find out how NMET has affected English teaching and learning in high schools, both its positive and negative influence. Based on the above analysis and research findings, some suggestions have been proposed to the present reform on high school teaching and testing, which aim at making the NMET process more desirable and relevant and at the same time promoting its beneficial backwash effects, to help improve the teaching and learning that is going on in China's high school English language classrooms.