The Washback Of Grammar Blanks Filling In NMET On Discourse Teaching And Learning In Senior High School

Backwash,also known as washback,usually refers to the actual effect of examination on teaching and learning.English,as an important subject in College Entrance Examination,will inevitably have a certain impact on English teaching and learning in senior high schools.In February 2014,the National Educational Examinations Authority carried out a major reform on the test type in the National Matriculation English Test(NMET).It was announced that,beginning in 2014,the "single-choice item",which had been used for decades on the College Entrance Examination paper,would be cancelled and replaced by a new test type,Grammar Blanks Filling.English Curriculum Standard(2017)points out that English teaching should be carried out based on discourse,so it is worth exploring what kind of washback effect of English Grammar Blanks Filling on discourse teaching and learning in senior high school after the introduction of new test type in the College Entrance Examination paper.This thesis will study the washback effect of Grammar Blanks Filling on discourse teaching and learning in senior high schools,focusing on the following three questions: 1.What are the students' and teachers' attitudes towards Grammar Blanks Filling in NMET? 2.What is the washback of Grammar Blanks Filling in NMET on English discourse teaching in senior high school? 3.What is the washback of GrammarBlanks Filling in NMET on English discourse learning in senior high school?Aimed at above questions,this study adopts questionnaire,classroom observation and interview as research instruments.The subjects of this study are 47 English teachers and 456 students of Grade 2and Grade 3 from Chifeng No.2 Senior High School,Inner Mongolia.The results show that: 1.Attitude of teachers and students towards Grammar Blanks Filling is that,for teachers,they welcome Grammar Blanks Filling.83.3% of the teachers surveyed have a positive attitude towards Grammar Blanks Filling,and 85.2% of the teachers think that Grammar Blanks Filling will help students master language skills,such as reading and writing.In addition,they support the transformation of grammar part.For students,their attitude is more complicated than that of the teachers'.Although students also believe that Grammar Blanks Filling can help them master language skills,such as reading and writing,the60.3% students surveyed believe that Grammar Blanks Filling is more difficult than grammatical single-choice item.2.The washback of Grammar Blanks Filling on discourse teaching and learning in senior high school is that teachers and students focus on the whole discourse level rather than the simple sentence level and pay attention to the application of discourse knowledge in teaching and learning.Although Grammar Blanks Filling plays a positive role in discourse teaching,Englishteaching does not really meet the requirements of curriculum standards in the actual teaching process.The curriculum standard emphasizes that English teaching should improve students' ability to acquire and process information,analyze and solve problems,and develop students' comprehensive language application ability.However,in the actual teaching process,teachers and students pay too much attention to exam-oriented skill,and teaching method is single.Based on the above findings,the author puts forward some suggestions to teachers and students in senior high schools,hoping to further improve the positive washback effect of Grammar Blanks Filling on discourse teaching and learning in senior high schools.