Washback
Does the exam really run your classroom?
Washback is the influence a test has on teaching and learning, which can be positive, negative or both, and which research shows is real but rarely simple or automatic.
In March, Ms Lan’s Grade 12 class quietly stops doing speaking tasks, because the exam they face has no speaking paper. Washback (also called backwash) is the influence a test has on teaching and learning. For years it was simply assumed: bad tests cause bad teaching, so change the test and teaching will follow.
Charles Alderson and Dianne Wall (1993) challenged that assumption in a paper boldly titled Does washback exist? They pointed out that the claim had rarely been tested, and set out fifteen hypotheses for research. These separated effects on what teachers teach from effects on how they teach, and allowed that washback might vary with a test’s stakes and from teacher to teacher. Their study of a new exam in Sri Lanka found effects on lesson content but little change in teaching methods. Later reviews confirm the picture: washback is real, but teachers’ beliefs, training, materials and school pressures filter it.
Samuel Messick (1996) warned against treating good washback as proof that a test is valid, since so many other forces are at work. Instead, he urged validity by design: authentic, direct tasks are the likeliest basis for positive effects. Many testers now keep washback for effects on teaching and learning, and use impact for a test’s wider effects on people, institutions and society, a frame Hamp-Lyons (1997) argued for. That links washback to the consequences of test use and to the wider validity argument for a test.
For teachers, the news is double-edged. An exam pushes, but it does not dictate your methods: the space between the test and the lesson is yours to use.
In actionThe question every teacher hears
- S1
- Teacher, will this be in the exam?
- T
- Not as a speaking task. But the reading section has opinion texts, right?
- S1
- Yes, always.
- T
- So arguing your opinion out loud now is how you’ll spot the writer’s opinion later.
An invented exchange. The teacher accepts the exam’s pull but links a communicative task to it, using the space washback leaves open rather than narrowing the lesson.
In the classroom
- 1
Map your exam against your syllabus: list what the test samples, what it ignores, and where your course time actually goes. Then protect at least one valued skill the test ignores.
- 2
Teach exam formats explicitly but briefly, then return to communicative tasks that build the underlying ability the format is meant to sample.
- 3
Ask learners how they prepare for the exam and why, because washback works through their choices as much as yours.
Myth and reality
Change the exam and teaching will automatically change with it.
Many studies find that tests shift what is taught more readily than how it is taught, and that teachers’ beliefs, training and materials strongly mediate any effect.
Reflect
Which of your teaching decisions this term were really made by the exam, and which did you only assume the exam required?
Worth a minute before your next lesson, or a conversation in the staffroom.
SourcesChecked against Crossref and library records
Both terms were already in use: Hughes (1989) wrote of backwash, and Morrow (1986) of washback validity. Alderson and Wall questioned the easy assumptions behind the concept and proposed fifteen testable hypotheses, which launched systematic washback research.
Alderson, J. C., & Wall, D. (1993). Does washback exist?. Applied Linguistics, 14(2), 115–129.
Wall, D., & Alderson, J. C. (1993). Examining washback: The Sri Lankan impact study. Language Testing, 10(1), 41–69.
The classroom study behind the famous question: a new exam changed lesson content, but not teachers’ methods in the way its designers hoped.
Messick, S. (1996). Validity and washback in language testing. Language Testing, 13(3), 241–256.
Explains why washback alone cannot prove a test valid, and argues for building validity into test design.
Bailey, K. M. (1996). Working for washback: A review of the washback concept in language testing. Language Testing, 13(3), 257–279.
A clear review that models washback in terms of participants, processes and products, and asks how positive washback can be promoted.
Hamp-Lyons, L. (1997). Washback, impact and validity: Ethical concerns. Language Testing, 14(3), 295–303.
Connects washback to the wider notion of impact and to the ethics of test use.
Spratt, M. (2005). Washback and the classroom: The implications for teaching and learning of studies of washback from exams. Language Teaching Research, 9(1), 5–29.
A teacher’s-eye review of washback studies, showing how much teachers shape the type and intensity of washback.
ConnectionsSee it in the graph
- Communicative Language Teachingnot yet writtenNarrow exams can pull lessons away from communicative goals.
- Assessment Literacynot yet writtenUnderstanding a test helps teachers steer its washback.
- The Validity Argumentnot yet writtenWhether washback counts as validity evidence is a question for the argument about test use.
- Consequential Validitynot yet writtenMessick treated washback as one instance of the consequences of testing.
- Formative AssessmentClassroom assessment can counterbalance the pull of external exams.
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