Washback Effect Of Cet-4on Students’ Learning Motivation In Private Universities

As a “high-stakes” test widely held all around China, the profound influence ofCET-4could never be ignored. In recent years, researchers have done much on thewashback of CET-4. However, their studies either concentrate largely on its washbackon teaching and learning, or a part of the test paper. On the one hand, they pay lessattention to learner factors, especially motivation, a key factor to the achievement oflanguage learning. On the other hand, researchers rarely choose students in privateuniversities as the participants of their studies, while CET-4certainly exerts washbackon them since they need to take the test as their peers in state-owned universities.Therefore, the present study aims to explore the washback effect of CET-4onstudents’ learning motivation in private universities. By combining the theoriesprovided by Hughes (1993), Bailey (1996), Prodromou (1996), Gu Xiangdong (2007)with researches conducted by Gao Yihong et al.(2003) into the motivation types ofnon-English majors in Chinese colleges and universities, this study employsquestionnaire and interview as the research methods.Findings show that CET-4exerts washback on six different aspects of learningmotivation of students in private universities, including intrinsic, extrinsic, integrativeand instrumental motivation, as well as students’ psychological reactions andbehavioral changes. However, students in different grades are not influenced equallyin these aspects. To be specific, they share similarities in intrinsic motivation andintegrative motivation, but bear differences in extrinsic motivation, psychologicalreactions, behavioral changes and instrumental motivation. By comparing andanalyzing these similarities and differences, some implications for English teachingare also provided in this study.