A Study Of HSK Washback On Students’ Chinese Learning

The present study was intended to investigate the effect of HSK on Chinese learners.Two questionnaire surveys were administrated to 82 foreign students,who were learning Chinese,before and during the test-preparation period.On the other hand,a interview was conducted with 6 Chinese learners to better understand the process of Chinese learning before and during the test..The main results are as follows:Both the questionnaires and interview show that HSK washback effect on Chinese learners does exist.During the preparation,most of the learners will be prepared for the HSK test,such as making a preparation plan,conducting test practice intensively,changing the learning content,increasing the learning time,using more learning strategies.But the degree of HSK washback varied both among different participants and across different aspects of learning.Some were very strong,and some were weak.In addition,this article also supposed that HSK washback on students’ vocabulary learning is obvious.On the other hand,HSK exerted stronger washback on hearing practice than on reading and writing practice.Chinese learners’ perceptions of stakes and difficulty of HSK test might be attributable to the washback and the degree of it.According to the research results above,this paper puts forward some suggestions to the HSK staffs,teachers and students.