Language testing and assessment

Language testing and assessment

Washback

The term washback refers to the impact that tests
have on teaching and learning. Such impact is usually
seen as being negative: tests are said to force teachers
to do things they do not necessarily wish to do.
However, some have argued that tests are potentially
also levers for change in language education: the
argument being that if a bad test has negative impact,
a good test should or could have positive washback
(Alderson, 1986b; Pearson, 1988).
Interestingly, Skehan, in the last review of the State
of the Art in Language Testing (Skehan, 1988,1989),
makes only fleeting reference to washback, and even
then, only to assertions that communicative language
testing and criterion-referenced testing are likely to
lead to better washback - with no evidence cited.
Nor is research into washback signalled as a likely
important future development within the language
testing field. Let those who predict future trends do
so at their peril!
In the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics series,
equally, the only substantial reference to washback is
by McNamara (1998) in a chapter entitled: Policy
and social considerations in language assessment .
Even the chapter entitled Developments in language
testing by Douglas (1995) makes no reference to
washback. Given the importance assigned to consequential
validity and issues of consequences in the
general assessment literature, especially since the
popularisation of the Messickian view of an allencompassing
construct validity (see Part Two), this is
remarkable, and shows how much the field has
changed in the last six or seven years. However, a
recent review of validity theory (Chapelle, 1999)
makes some reference to washback under construct
validity, reflecting the increased interest in the topic.
Although the notion that tests have impact on
teaching and learning has a long history, there was
surprisingly little empirical evidence to support such
notions until recently. Alderson and Wall (1993) were
among the first to problematise the notion of test
washback in language education, and to call for
research into the impact of tests. They list a number
of Washback Hypotheses in an attempt to develop a
research agenda. One Washback Hypothesis, for
example, is that tests will have washback on what
teachers teach (the content agenda), whereas a separate
washback hypothesis might posit that tests also
have impact on how teachers teach (the methodology
agenda). Alderson and Wall also hypothesise that
high-stakes tests - tests with important consequences
- would have more impact than low-stakes tests.They
urge researchers to broaden the scope of their
enquiry, to include not only attitude measurement
and teachers accounts of washback but also classsroom
observation. They argue that the study of washback
would benefit from a better understanding of
student motivation and of the nature of innovation in

education, since the notion that tests will automatically
have an impact on the curriculum and on learning
has been advocated atheoretically. Following on
from this suggestion, Wall (1996) reviews key concepts
in the field of educational innovation and shows
how they might be relevant to an understanding of
whether and how tests have washback. Lynch and
Davidson (1994) describe an approach to criterionreferenced
testing which involves practising teachers
in the translation of curricular goals into test specifications.
They claim that this approach can provide a
link between the curriculum, teacher experience and
tests and can therefore, presumably, improve the
impact of tests on teaching.
Recently, a number of empirical washback studies
have been carried out (see, for example, Khaniyah,
1990a, 1990b; Shohamy, 1993; Shohamy et al, 1996;
Wall & Alderson, 1993; Watanabe, 1996; Cheng,
1997) in a variety of settings. There is general agreement
among these that high-stakes tests do indeed
impact on the content of teaching and on the nature
of the teaching materials. However, the evidence that
they impact on how teachers teach is much scarcer
and more complicated. Wall and Alderson (1993)
found no evidence for any change in teachers
methodologies before and after the introduction of a
new style school-leaving examination in English in
Sri Lanka. Alderson and Hamp-Lyons (1996) show
that teachers may indeed change the way they teach
when teaching towards a test (in this case, the
TOEFL —Test of English as a Foreign Language), but
they also show that the nature of the change and the
methodology adopted varies from teacher to teacher,
a conclusion supported by Watanabe s 1996 findings.
Alderson and Hamp-Lyons argue that it is not
enough to describe whether and how teachers might
adapt their teaching and the content of their teaching
to suit the test. They believe that it is important to
explain why teachers do what they do, if we are to
understand the washback effect. Alderson (1998) suggests
that testing researchers should explore the literature
on teacher cognition and teacher thinking to
understand better what motivates teacher behaviour.
Cheng (1997) shows that teachers only adapt their
methodology slowly, reluctantly and with difficulty,
and suggests that this may relate to the constraints on
teachers and teaching from the educational system
generally. Shohamy et al. (1996) show that the nature
of washback varies according to factors such as the
status of the language being tested, and the uses of the
test. In short, the phenomenon of washback is slowly
coming to be recognised as a complex matter, influenced
by many factors other than simply the existence
of a test or the nature of that test. Nevertheless,
no major studies have yet been carried out into the
effect of test preparation on test performance, which
is remarkable, given the prevalence, for high-stakes
tests at least, of test preparation courses.