A Study On The Washback Effect Of Pragmatic Test On Senior English Teaching

The evaluation suggestion of Senior English Curriculum Standard indicates that evaluation is the important constituent part of English curriculum, and that a scientific evaluation system is an important guarantee to achieve curricular goals. The general goal of Senior English Curriculum is to make the students fully understand the purpose of study, develop independent study and co-operative study, form effective English learning strategy, and cultivate their integrated ability to use the language. The form of integrated ability is based on the all-round development of language skills, language knowledge, emotional attitude, learning strategy and cultural consciousness. The evaluation of English Curriculum is to supervise the whole teaching course and its results effectively, according to the goals and requirements of curriculum standard.But the present senior English teaching is far from requirements of the new curriculum, because it is affected by the traditional teaching style and NMET. Many teachers in senior schools pay more attention to teaching language knowledge to deal with NMET, but neglect the cultivation of the students'integrated ability. They lack a set of systemic evaluation mode which is consistent with the new curriculum evaluation and still apply the old testing mode mechanically. What's more, they don't care about the study of the washback effect of the test. They think that the evaluation of the test is the business of leaders and schools. What they need to do is to teach the language knowledge.This thesis is divided into 6 chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the current teaching and testing environment. It describes the origin and development of pragmatic test, especially its consistency with the evaluation suggestions in the new curriculum standard. Chapter 2 of this thesis presents a brief historical review over the past research work done on washback and the development of the theory. Chapter 3 presents descriptive research that is designed to identify and classify washback. It sets up the theoretical bases for later chapters. Its utmost goal is to put the theory into practice ---to really put pragmatic test to use in the EFL classroom. Chapter 4 describes the research's design, participants and instruments. The data collection procedures are also reviewed. Chapter 5 gives a description of an experiment implemented in the senior high schools. The result of the experiment is properly analyzed, and various factors which contribute to and help explain the result of the experiment are considered. The area which is of the greatest interest to language teachers is elaborated on and the patterns that students display in the experiment are recorded and categorized. In Chapter 6 we review the research and highlight the main findings that we have got in the experiment. Suggestions on the application of pragmatic test in foreign language teaching environment are produced, based on the result and conclusion drawn from the previous chapters. We also reflect the limitations of the study and give some recommendations for further research.In general, we draw on the knowledge of pragmatic test, seeking to find an applicable way to improve the teaching and learning level. We attempt to achieve this from a test angle, focusing on language in use. We have also discussed the pros and cons of such an approach in foreign language teaching. We finally summarize what we have learnt from our research and set the future direction for work on applying pragmatic test in senior high school research and practice.