A Study On The Washback Effect Of CET-4 On College Students' Perceptions And Attitudes Towards Their English Learning

Washback,an important concept in language testing,mainly refers to the influences that high-stakes test have on teaching and learning.College English Test Band 4(CET-4)is one of the largest foreign language tests in China.The research on its washback has been conducted from various perspectives on teaching,learning,curricular design,and material development.However,research that exclusively focuses on student's perceptions and attitudes towards learning is still lacking.The current study uses the questionnaire survey method,supplemented by interviews and observations to examine the washback effects of CET-4 on the English learning perceptions and attitudes of non-English majors.Two groups of non-English major students were surveyed: the prospective students who haven't yet taken the test and those who have.The research participants were 329 non-English majors from five regular universities in Shaanxi Province.157 of them were about to participate in CET-4,and 172 just had taken it.Two separate questionnaires were administered to the prospective test takers and test takers to study the washback effects of CET-4 on the English learning perceptions and attitudes.Descriptive statistics factor analysis,and Pearson correlation test were used to process the questionnaire data collected from the two groups.The results of the study show that CET-4 has positive washback effects on non-English majors who are about to take the test.Although there are some negative washback effects,they are not comparable in degree to the positive ones.The results from Pearson correlation of those who have taken the test suggest a significantly negative correlation between their CET-4 scores and their views on the difficulty of the test questions,and there is a relatively strong positive correlation between test scores and their perceptions and attitudes towards English and CET-4.The research results yield some implications on how positive washback can be maximized and negative washback can be minimized in terms of how future test takers perceive their learning efforts and how their attitudes towards CET-4 can be developed positively.