Washback Of Ielts Writing Test On Non-english Majors’ English Writing Learning

Washback refers to the impact of testing on teaching and learning.The close relationship between testing and teaching makes the study on washback particularly significant.IELTS is a standardized international language proficiency test of English,and it is especially obvious and serious that Chinese candidates generally get a low score in the IELTS writing tasks.There are few studies on the washback of IELTS at home and abroad,and there are rare studies from the perspective of English writing of learners.Therefore,it is necessary to study the washback of the IELTS writing test on English learners in China.Following Shih’s New Washback Model of students’ learning,this research employed a combination of questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview to investigate 30 non-English major IELTS students in an IELTS training institution in Wuhan.It mainly explores two research questions:1)In which aspects and to what extent will the IELTS writing test have washback on students’ English writing learning and what kinds of washback are they respectively? 2)Are the washbacks of IELTS writing test on students with different English proficiency levels different? If they are,in which aspects and to what extent are they different?The questionnaire is designed to investigate the washback from the aspects of students’ English writing learning anxiety,learning motivation,learning time,learning content,and learning strategy,and the reliability of the questionnaire was checked by the pilot study.The Independent-Sample T Test in SPSS 23.0 is used to process the data in the questionnaire,and the information in the interview was illustrated directly.Based on classifying the high and low groups in foreign language teaching researches,the students are divided into the high group and low group in line with their CET4 score.The research aims to investigate whether there is a significant difference in the washback on students with different English proficiency in each aspect of English writing learning,and to explain the differences with the questionnaire data further.The results showed that(1)the IELTS writing test has both positive and negative washback on non-English majors’ English writing learning and the positive washback is greater than the negative washback.(2)There exists washback in the five dimensions of students’ English writing learning,including learning anxiety,learning motivation,and learning time,learning content,and learning strategy.(3)The difference between the two different English levels mainly exists in learning time,learning content and learning strategy.The test exerts washback on students with high English level at all the five dimensions,while it has a little or even no effect on the learning content and strategy of low English level students.And the high proficiency students get more intensive washback.In this thesis,corresponding suggestions are put forward to help students make better use of the positive washback and avoid the negative washback as much as possible.The present thesis may provide guiding references for the English writing learning and IELTS preparation of students as well as the English writing instruction of teachers.