An Empirical Study On Washback Of Communicative Writing Test To English Writing Teaching

In China, with the development of research on language theory and language teaching rules, more and more researchers come to realize the importance of English writing, but it has been always the relatively weaker section in language teaching. Traditional writing teaching features special focus on dull on dry introduction of theory, accompanied by mechanical exercises once in a while, which neglects the importance to cultivate students'communicative competence and fails to offer effective feedback to students'compositions. Such instructive approach hurts greatly learners'enthusiasm, resulting in lower degree of involvement of the class. A proper refined more effective instructional approach is in great need presently. Writing is not only a process of thinking, but also a means of communications with language on paper. Students'writing competence is to be reflected comprehensively through basic language knowledge and communicative competence. Since communicative competence was brought forward by Hymes in 1971, research and practice on communicative teaching have been flourishing, among which studies on communicative writing test seems to be rather fruitful. The paper intends to design a new communicative writing teaching model based on the features of communicative writing test, and to check its washback on writing learning through teaching experiment carried out on English majors.The research of the paper is deeply rooted on related theories like language communicative competence, features of communicative writing test, and relationship between language testing and teaching. Under the guidance of these theories, an experimental communicative writing teaching model is contrived to investigate the washback of communicative writing test reflected on writing teaching and learning, based on the features of communicative writing test, in integration with communicative competence and the nature of writing. Qualitative and quantitative analysis methods are adopted in the demonstration of its teaching results, which could simultaneously prove and reflect the specific details of the washback effects of communicative writing test clearly. A 15 weeks experiment was carried out among two pairs of parallel classes of English major chosen from two local universities, after which results of test, questionnaire and interview were drawn from these subjects to finish the empirical research. It is indicated that such communicative writing teaching which derived from communicative writing test, emphasizing learners'role, aiming at the consolidating students'competence to fulfill the specific communicative task, focusing on the objective, social, cultural and cognitive features of writing, and showing preference in designation of communicative teaching environment works efficiently in helping students sense the communicative nature of writing and improve communicative writing ability. Students would benefit a lot by being trained to reflect deeply on communicative features of their own compositions and the writing process. English writing teaching has been proved to be more effective under the influence of such approach derived from communicative writing tests.