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Wash Back

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16 views3 pages

Wash Back

Uploaded by

Kamal MX3
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Wash-back

Definitions:
1. Wash-back:

“Wash-back is the effect a test has on the teaching environment which


has preceded it” (Hamp-Lyons, 1991: 337)

It is the positive or negative impact of tests on teaching and learning. For example, national
language examinations have a major impact on teaching and teachers often “teach to the
tests”. In order to bring about changes in teaching, changes may have to be made in the tests.
For example, if the education department in a country wanted schools to spend more time
teaching listening skills, one way to bring this about would be to introduce a listening
comprehension test component into national examinations. The washback would be that more
class time would then be spent on teaching listening skills. When teaching is found to exert an
important effect on testing, this impact is called reverse washback (Richards & Schmidt, 2011).

2. Impact:

The effect of a test on individual test takers, other stakeholders (e.g.


teachers, parents, school administrators, or test developers), educational
systems, or society (Richards & Schmidt, 2011).

Wash-back Impact
-instruction, curriculum planning, and -communities and societies in the form of
materials design policies
-small and large-scale phenomena

Characteristics of wash-back:
Positive: tests align with learning objectives.
Negative: the mismatch of instructional goals and the focus of assessment.
Intended: there are specific intentions on the part of test constructors, and they are made
public.
Unintended: it is unplanned, and it can be either positive or negative.

Link to validity:
Test impact and washback have been largely linked to the concept of consequential validity and
the implications of test use (Schissel, 2018).
Some proponents have even maintained that a test’s validity should be appraised by the degree
to which it manifests positive or negative washback (Messick, 1996)
Construct underrepresentation: where the items on an assessment
are too narrowly focused on a few skills.
Construct-irrelevant variance: a situation in which external, unrelated variables
influence test performance. E.g., a prompt asks test takers to describe experiences that
disproportionately advantage one group over another.

High stakes assessment:


Positive impact: motivation
Negative impacts: focusing on drill activities/ narrowing the syllabus/ teaching to test

Importance of paying attention to wash-back:


 Inform teaching and learning in day-to-day classroom interactions
 Reduce negative consequences
 Build tests that foster learning and cognitive and linguistic development.
 Reduce test-related anxiety.

Reducing negative wash-back:


 Don’t overemphasize the assessment by focusing on test-wiseness or test-taking
strategies.
 Test to teach.
 Self-monitor or recognize your tone of conversation around testing.
 Listen to the students’ concerns about a test and discuss the purpose of an exam in
relation to the students’ goals to reduce anxiety and focus on learning objectives rather
than on test preparation.
 Emphasize performance assessment over drills.
 Narrow the gap between activities involved in learning the language and activities
involved in preparing for the test.

1.Listening and speaking:


Some teachers consider listening and speaking “low-stakes” skills because they are not included
in the national baccalaureate exam specifications.
They feel less pressure to develop or provide additional materials to prepare the students
because the skills are not targeted in the standardized test.

 Include the two skills in classroom assessment (an example is given in “integrated skills”
slide).
Teachers can resist fully aligning with test administration guidelines.

2.Reading:
 Find texts and tasks that are as authentic as possible.
 Multiple-choice reading comprehension does not encourage the development of critical
literacy skills.
3.Writing:
 Don’t focus on one essay type.
 Use multiple-trait scoring rubrics that measure specific features of performance
necessary for successful fulfillment of a given task or tasks.

4.Language aspects:
 Test them with communicative tasks.

5.Integrated skills:
 Independent practice of skills (in isolation) does not align with the communicative
approach.
An example of an integrated skills test task:

 Students listen to a passage, read a different passage, and then write an essay using
both sources.

References:
Hamp-Lyons, L. (ed). (1991). Assessing second language writing in
academic contexts. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Richards, J.C., & Schmidt, R.W. (2011). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics (4th ed.). Routledge.
Schissel, J.L. (2018). Test impact and washback. In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language
Teaching, First Edition. Edited by John I. Liontas (Project Editor: Margo DelliCarpini; Volume
Editor: Christine Coombe), Hoboken, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Messick, S. (1996). Validity and washback in language testing. Princeton, New
Jersey:Educational Testing Service.

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