An Investigation Of Washback Effects Of NMET Writing Test On Senior English Writing Teaching

English writing test becomes an important measure in NMET to exam students’ proficiency of the language. With the implementation of the new curriculum innovation, the composition topic of NMET becomes more open and diversified which obviously emphasizes students’integrative competence. Comparing NMET papers from different provinces over recent8years, it finds out that the writing task has changed greatly in topic setting and proportion (especially in Hunan NMET test paper). It also constitutes a larger proposition which increased from23.3%to30%. It is held that the reform of NMET writing task would bring about washback effects on English teaching. However, how far this test actually influences English writing teaching remains unclear. The present study tries to investigate the washback effects of the NMET writing test on English writing teaching in senior high schools.Questionnaire, interview and classroom observation were conducted to identify the positive and negative washback effects of NMET English writing test and possible suggestions will be given on how to promote positive washback and reduce negative washback..Findings of the present research revealed that the positive washback of NMET writing test on English writing teaching in senior high schools was reflected in five changes: Firstly, teachers’teaching conception has changed. Their focal point of teaching began to shift from grammatical training toward real-life communication. Secondly, teachers’ teaching approach has also changed. They attached great importance to writing products as well as the whole writing process. Thirdly, teaching medium has become various. Some of the teachers began to abundantly make use of the multimedium technology to enrich teaching form. What’s more, teachers’and students’roles have also changed a lot. The relationship between teachers and students are quite cooperative rather than dominant now. Finally, contents and methods of writing assessment became more various. Various factors such as teachers’deficient understanding of the assessment standard of the test, students’ English level and social pressure have been found to be involved in the process of generating washback. Therefore, the positive washback effects in some municipal key schools are stronger than that in ordinary schools.Based upon the findings, some suggestions will be given:for teachers, first they should distribute their teaching time reasonably; then they may use the teaching materials creatively; thirdly a new writing teaching mode with "autonomous, cooperative, exploratory" as the main feature need to be established; For the test designers, they need to consider more justice for the rural areas and combine the openness with control in writing proposition. They can also divertificate the contents of assessment.