The Washback Effect Of CET4 On College Students’ English Learning

College English Test Four(abbreviated as CET4) is a national examination organized by the Ministry of Education to serve college teaching. In order to examine students’ language ability accurately and objectively, CET4’s innovation and its study on washback effect has never stopped in the thirty years since it first came out. But most studies are concentrated on the teacher and the teaching, and there is lack of studies on “variability” of the washback effect.In August 2013, CET4 accepted another reformation in which three items were adjusted and one was removed. Taking this chance, we conducted a study on the washback effect of CET4 and its three reformed items(Words and Phrases Dictation, Long Matching Reading, Paragraph Translation) combining qualitative and quantitative methods to give this reformation a reflection. In the research, 690 college students in Shenyang Normal University accepted a questionnaire survey, and ten of them were interviewed. In order to explore the differences among the different level English learners and the influential factors, all the subjects were grouped in two ways according to their scores of the latest CET4. One group includes the level above the average, the average level and the level under the average; the other group includes the CET4 passed level and CET4 non-passed level. The study is designed to answer the following questions: 1. What kind of washback effect do the reformed CET4 and its three kinds of items exert on students’ English learning? 2. What differences do the reformed CET4 and its three kinds of items produce among different level learners? 3. What factors influence the differences among different level learners?The data analysis involved reliability analysis, factor analysis, independent sample test, and one-way anova. The research findings reveal that the reformed CET4 exerts both positive and negative effect, and the positive effect far outweighs the negative one. The major conclusions are as follows: 1. CET4 can urge students to keep studying English, but it also causes their exam-oriented tendency and pressure; students identify with CET4, including its moderate difficulty, reasonable score weight, and appropriate answering time; Paragraph Translation is the most effective way to test and improve students’ language ability; Words and Phrases Dictation is easier than Compound Dictation to score; the process of completing Long Matching Reading involves too many exam-oriented skills; 2. Significant differences exist among different level learners in three aspects, including “the evaluation on test design of CET4”, “the influence of CET4 on English learning” and “the exam-oriented tendency to CET4”; 3. Two kinds of factor contribute these differences. One is internal cause that involves learning methods and learning interests; the other is external cause that involves learning time and a test’s difficulty index and score weight.With the purpose of motivating the improvement of CET4 and students’ English learning, this paper offers the following suggestions for reference: 1. Balance the difficulty index and the score weight of the CET4 items; 2. Strengthen the connection of CET4 and students’ daily life; 3. Properly adjust the way to report the results of CET4; 4. Reduce the application of exam-oriented skills of Long Matching Reading; 5. Properly reduce the difficulty index and the score proportion of Paragraph Translation; 6. Cancel the policy in some educational institutions that connect the results of CET4 with students’ graduation; 7. Try to offer different level teaching to meet the needs of different level students; 8. Students’ time and energy should be balanced between their English study and professional majors, and students should learn good learning methods, making detailed learning procedures, cultivating their own interests in English, studying English assiduously and perseveringly, avoiding relying on the exam-oriented study before the exam.