A Study On The Backwash Effect Of NMET(Tian Jin) Reading And Answering Part

"The backwash effect" usually refers to the influence of tests on language teaching and learning. It is often related to "high-stake" tests, whose results have a major effect on the future of the test-takers. The National College Entrance Examination English Test (TianJin), as a "high-stake" exam for the senior high school, may have both positive and negative effects on English teaching. The ideal goal of language testing is to have beneficial impact from it. The NMET (TianJin) has changed the item of "proof reading" into a new question type--Reading and Answering since2009, but until now there is few related research of backwash effect on it.The purpose of this paper is to study the washback effect of NMET (TianJin) Reading and Answering on Senior English teaching based on Aldereson and Wall’s Hypotheses. The participants of the study include40teachers,419students from high school, and102freshmen from college. The teachers and high school students come from5high schools in Bei Chen Borough in TianJin.102freshmen are from2universities in TianJin. They were required to fill out the questionnaires and some of them were interviewed by the author.The results of the study showed that Reading and Answering part of the NMET (TianJin) had its positive and negative effects on senior high school English teaching and learning. The positive side was as follows:firstly, it could promote the completion of the teaching task. Secondly, it could arouse the enthusiasm of teachers’ teaching and improve students’ learning motivation. Thirdly, it could broaden the students’ thinking, improve the students’ ability to solve practical problems and extend the students’ knowledge. The negative side was that the question types were so fixed that it is likely for teachers and students to generalize the laws to handle the questions in the examination. Furthermore, it may contribute to the tendency of teaching and learning only for testing, which is a phenomenon among teachers and students in Senior Grade Three. All these may affect the development of the students’ comprehensive language ability. There are also some limitations of the study. Due to the small sample size, the results yielded from this study will only serve as hypotheses to be tested in the future. More researches need to be done concerning the washback effect of NMET (Tianjin).