A Study On The Washback Effect Of NMET Reading Comprehension On Teaching Reading In High Schools

Washback effect refers to the influence of tests,especially large-scale and high-stake tests,on teaching and learning,which can be either positive or negative.To investigate the washback effect of NMET reading comprehension on teaching reading in high schools,this study first analyzes the reading skills involved in NMET reading comprehension in the past five years according to the six requirements in NMET Directions(understanding the topic and main idea of the passage,understanding specific information,inferring the meaning of new words or phrases from the context,making judgments and inferences,understanding the basic structure of the passage,and understanding writers' intentions,opinions and attitudes).Then,questionnaire surveys,classroom observation and interviews are carried out among English teachers from six key high schools in Zhejiang Province to look into the current situation of teaching these reading skills in reading classes,explore the washback effect of NMET reading comprehension on teaching reading,and discover the underlying reasons of teachers' question design in reading classes.The results of this study show that NMET reading comprehension does have some positive washback effect on teaching reading in the dimensions of teaching contents and teaching focuses in reading classes.In reading class,teachers pay much attention to six reading skills,especially skills that related to “summary writing” and“continuous writing”,provide test-taking strategies frequently,and apply various forms of questions.However,the washback effect of NMET reading comprehension on teachers varies from teacher to teacher.Experienced teachers are more likely to be affected by NMET reading comprehension while the impacts of the test are not tooovert on novice teachers.Experienced teachers always can take all reading skills into consideration in teaching reading,but most novice teachers only can consider some of these reading skills for not all teachers have in-depth study in NMET.