The Comparison Between The Old And New TOEFL And Their Washback On English Learning And Teaching

Washback refers to test influence on teaching and learning. A synonym of washback is backwash. Language testing can have either positive washback or negative one. With development of linguistics, language testing has three stages:the pre-scientific, the psychometric-structuralism, and the psycholiguistic-sociolignuistic. At present time, communicative language testing is arousing more and more attentions of linguistic scholars and teachers because of its high validity, reliability, authenticity, and interactiveness. According to Morrow, communicative language testing should belong to the last one.TOEFL, the Test of English as a Foreign Language, has been the leading academic English proficiency test in the world for more than 40 years. It measures the ability of nonnative speakers of English to use and understand North American English as it is spoken, written and heard in college and university settings. Historically, TOEFL has 3 formats, CBT (computer-based test), PBT (paper-based test) and iBT (internet-based test). In China's main land, we only had PBT before, and have TOEFL iBT for the present. People, both students and teachers, would like to call both CBT and PBT as "old TOEFL" and TOEFL iBT as "new TOEFL" in Chinese. TOEFL iBT is adopted in 2006 by ETS worldwide. Studying on the TOEFL reform is inadequate and relatively new. Furthermore, the TOEFL iBT is a typical example of communicative language test. Therefore, it is meaningful for the author to choose the topic of the TOEFL reform and carry out a research on it.The thesis is made up of six chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction of the whole thesis besides the background information of ETS and the development of TOEFL. Chapter 2 is devoted to literature review that is composed of two parts. The first part probes into the definition of communicative competence and communicative language test that lay a basic framework for the whole study. The second part investigates how the washback mechanism operates and what researches on washback have been done in the past. Chapter 3 is concerned about research methodology, where the author presents three research questions and the design of research, including research subjects, procedures and methods. Chapter 4 indicates the research results related to "old" and "new" TOEFL comparison and washback of TOEFL reform. For the first comparison part, it has seven items. The author presents comparison results in each item, and also has a result summary in the end. For the second washback part, the author presents washback on test takers, teaching and learning, education system and society as a whole respectively. Chapter 5 serves as conclusions and implications. The author summarizes the comparison results and influence of the TOEFL reform on English teaching and learning in China, and proposes implications for the English teaching and learning in China.The thesis will help us gain a better and more profound understanding of communicative competence test, the TOEFL reform and TOEFL washback on English learning and teaching so that it will lay good foundation for further research.