A Study On The Washback Of The Listening Test In NMET On Listening Teaching

Language testing is indispensable in language teaching.It provides teachers with teaching objectives and helps teachers to monitor the teaching process during the realization of teaching goals,providing extremely favorable feedback for teaching.The relationship between testing and teaching was put forward as washback(Morrow,1986).This concept is applied to the field of linguistics and it means the influence of language testing on teaching,especially foreign language testing.As part of an important examination,the listening test in the National Matriculation English Test(NMET)will inevitably have a profound washback on senior middle school listening teaching.However,there are not many studies of washback of the listening test in NMET on senior middle school classroom teaching.So this paper mainly relies on the theoretical analysis framework of Alderson and Wall to study the possible washbacks of the listening test in NMET on listening teaching.This paper employs quantitative research method.Questionnaire is the main research tool.The subjects are 82 English teachers from three middle schools in Pingquan City.There are two research questions: 1.What are the possible washbacks of the listening test in NMET on listening teaching? 2.What are the different washbacks of the listening test in NMET among teachers in terms of academic qualification and age?The results show that the listening test in NMET has a positive washback on teaching objectives,teaching contents,teaching activities,teaching time arrangements and training of listening skills;washback among teachers with different academic qualifications is significantly different in teaching contents,teaching activities,teaching time arrangements and training of listening skills;washback among teachers of different ages is significantly different in teaching objectives and training of listening skills.Based on the results,the author suggests teachers understand the relationship between the listening test and actual classroom teaching,which helps to promote the positive washback of the listening test and reduce its negative washback.Due to the limited number of samples and the length of study time,the paper is not universal,but it can still provide reference for relevant research.At last,the author puts forward some suggestions about the further studies of washback.