Backwash Effects Of National Matriculation English Test(NMET)on Senior High School Students’ English Learning

National Matriculation English Test has become one major reforming area. The impact of the tes t on teach ers’ teaching and s tudents’ learning is called "washback" or "backwash". Much current research on backwash has m ainly focused on teachers’ teaching b ut neglected students’ learning. As the subjects of English education and the direct undertakers of NMET, senior high school students should be paid more attention. Therefore, the backwa sh of NMET on senior high students’ English learning, the factors of causing the wash-back effects and how to reduce its negative backwash on these l earners become the priority and the focus of my study This study is carried out in a senior hi gh school in Panzhihua City. 306 students and 6 senior high school English teachers are involved in this research. The m ethods of data collecting are questionnaire, interview and classroom observation. 306 copies of questionnaire are sent out and 298 valid copies are collected. Then classroom observations are made in the 6 classes which have finished questionnaires before. In addition, in order to get deeper inform ation, 6 English teachers and 9 students are chosen to be interviewed in order to have better understanding of the issue.The results show that NMET has both pos itive backwash and ne gative backwash on senior high school students ’ English learning. These backwash ef fects reflect on students’ learning attitudes, learning contents and learning materials. The findings also show that there are various factors leading to backwash of NMET on students’ learning. These factors can be divi ded into internal f actors and external factors. The internal factors refer to th e contents and the form of NMET. The external factors include six aspects: 1) The students’ learning m otivation; 2) The students’ learning methods; 3) The students’ attitudes to learning and NMET; 4) The students lack context practice; 5) T he influence from teachers’ instruction; 6) The influence from school environment.Based on the research results, some suggestions for students’ learning are given. These suggestions include helping stude nts make clear their learning goals, improving students’ learning ability, improving the practical usage of English learning, preparing well for the reform of NMET. This study explores the backwash effects of NMET on students’ learning from a new perspective on the relationship between NMET and English learning. Th is research provides an em pirical supplement for the backwash study and thus to offer some practical suggestions for English learning of senior high students as well as the reform of NMET.