The Standardized Central Assessment: The Washback Effect.

Introduction

Tests are often used as a part of teaching process to provide diagnosis of teaching

and learning results. Due to their wide use, tests, particularly standardised central

assessment, may exert an influence on teachers and students with an associated impact on

what happens in the classrooms and what they learn (Brown, 2004). The phenomenon that

testing becomes a dominant role to influence what and how teachers teach and students

learn is described as washback effects (McNamara, 2000). In Malaysia, many argue that

students leaving schools are inadequately equipped and incompetent with necessary

English language skills (Gladys & Glasper, 2009). This is particularly in communicative

ability and soft skills in which a strong command of the language offers advantage in the real

world. Many argue that it may be a correlated impact by the standardised central

assessment on the English language instruction in schools where extensive focus on

tailoring students for test preparation has neglected the importance of developing students’

language competence in other areas (i.e speaking).

This essay will discuss on the effects of “exam-driven” standardized central

assessment in Malaysia, and the negative backwash it produced in the teaching and

learning process; and will further provide suggestions for improvements.

Implications in the Malaysian classroom

Stress is placed on children demands of assessment.

In Malaysia, the communicative English language syllabus has been adopted

however it has become in practice a formal, grammar-based syllabus and focuses more on

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writing for the demand to prepare students to sit for continuous tests, and exams throughout

the year (Cameron, 2001). Instead of providing them with the rich meaningful language

learning experience to the students, the focus has been shifted instead to exam-driven

preparation. Students have to bear with the workload of drilling, and route learning which

instead, they should learn the language in a manner that it helps them to develop

themselves and also preparing them for the real world. This has imposed a huge stress on

students in achieving A’s in exams. Great expectation and emphasising on achieving A’s in

exams may well increase the number of parents to send their children for intensive tuition to

help them excel in tests.

In a wider context, the demands of the centralised assessment also impose

restrictions upon curricula, teachers, and students, as they will encourage the most

mechanical, boring, and debilitating form of teaching and learning (Cheng, Watanabe &

Curtis, 2004). Assessment should be a means to improve the teaching and learning process

in the classroom by providing necessary information to be worked upon as teaching and

assessment are interwoven and cannot be considered as separate entities. Based on my

own personal experience learning in school, students faced anxiety from excessive

emphasis on exams and learning had been nothing other than memorizing and everyone

viewed the importance of achieving an A. In my opinion, there is a need of change in the

classrooms today- focus is to assess for the purpose of educating and to improve learning

rather than to only report grades.

Learning to cover syllabus

Because students are practicing exam techniques rather than language learning

activities, Cameron (2001) asserts that testing devices has become teaching devices; that

teaching and learning was effectively being directed to past examination papers, making the

educational experience narrow and uninteresting (Cheng et al., 2004). Students learning are

thus downgraded in the force to cover syllabus for the next assessment, deterring students

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to be experience learning at most. Based on my personal experience, English language

classrooms mainly consist of drilling with grammar activities and also doing English pass

years exams. Therefore a lot more time and effort is devoted to teaching for tests, which

may also contribute to a more accelerated pace of learning during the period of time before

the test. Consequently, minimal attention is given to the student’s needs and interest for

meaningful learning.

Teachers teaching practice are confined to prepare students for exams

Test influences teachers and learners to do things they would not do necessarily

otherwise that promote or inhibit language learning (McNamara, 2000). For example,

preparing for exams might confine teachers to select on what and how to teach thus

narrowing the scope and content of teaching and learning in the classrooms. Teaching

methodology and learning experiences may end up gearing toward tests, regardless of

whether or not they understand the aims and the content of the curriculum. The negative

washback affected indirectly through assessment can be conflicting with the aims of the

curriculum and also the teacher’s philosophy and beliefs in English learning.

Restricting language learning experience to be based solely for exams impede

teachers to develop and implement other teaching instruction in the classroom (Brooks,

2002). Therefore, the standardised central assessment may well fail to reflect the learning

principles or the curriculum objectives to which they are supposedly related. In my opinion, it

is important that the assessment of what students have learned are based to achieve the

aims of the curriculum as to reflect the validity, reliability , and the accountability of the test.

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Alternative strategies and suggestions for further improvement

The potential influence of assessment on the teaching and learning process is

something that cannot be ignored and we should have the effort to minimize the unintended

negative washback effect of any assessment innovation upon teaching and learning. At a

presentation by an officer from the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (2008), it was stated

that the Syndicate was responding to a demand for change in assessment practices

because there appears to be a mismatch between curriculum content and assessment

practices (Ratnawati & Jaya, 2009). One of the demands is to empower the school and

teachers to assess their own students through school based assessment. This alternative

assessment stresses the need for assessment to be integrated with the goals of the

curriculum and to have a constructive relationship with teaching and learning (McNamara,

2000). Therefore, for the Malaysian context, the assessment should be reflective of the

Communicative English curriculum not only for the purpose of grading, but to implement

whatever necessary to benefit students to achieve the curriculum goals. Furthermore,

learners may be encouraged to share the responsibility in the assessment as it shifts away

to a more formative progressive assessment. The new assessment scheme that is due to be

implemented by the year 2012 (The Malay Mail, 2009) in Malaysia entails for a more holistic

approach of assessment which measure students in different aspects (30%= National

examination, 70% =School Based Assessment, co curriculum, psychometric tests). I strongly

agree with this change as the intended assessment requires integration of knowledge and

skills in performance and realistic tasks (portfolios, oral tests, etc.).

The use of assessment as a strategy for promoting change across education

systems has become increasingly widespread (Cheng et al., 2004). For Malaysia, the

implementation of the new assessment scheme is hoped to provide a positive washback

effect to shift the focus solely on exams, to a more holistic approach that will encourage

teachers and learners to mould into the new system. In my opinion, the new effort is a good

way in promoting a more balanced assessment in which students will also try to develop

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competence in other areas and not focussing solely on the public examination at the end of

the year. However, I believe that one of the aspects that should be integrated is to develop a

systematic progressive formative assessment on oral skills that will encourage students to

develop their competence in communicative purposes that takes into account the notion and

function of the language. The ripple effect of these changes might prepare students to

master the English in all areas producing more competent language learners that are able to

utilize the language in a variety of communicative way. This would encourage teachers and

students to spend more time engaged in performance such tasks as part of teaching. This is

of course, with the belief that the new system of assessment would produce a positive

washback effect on the teaching in the English classrooms to focus on the macro and micro

language skills fairly and adequately.

However, there are implication that needs to be addressed to teachers and schools.

School based assessment calls for teachers and schools to be more involved in the

assessment process and calls to equip teachers with assessment literacy (Fullan, 1999).

Furthermore, a monitoring, continuous development as more autonomy is given to school to

assess the students, it is important that a continuous development and monitoring to be

carried out thoroughly. Teachers’ role will expand far beyond just teaching, and

administrating papers for exam, but also to be aware of how to set up, grade, and establish

rubrics for assessment. The weight would shift to teachers who may become more

responsible for the design and conduct of assessment tasks. A report on school-based

assessment in Queensland (Maxwell, 2004) asserts that the most important factor critical to

the success of this approach to progressive assessment is the need for teachers to become

skilled in conducting assessment programs and judging the quality of student performance

against defined assessment standards. This is fairly important so as that it would not

jeopardize the validity, reliability and the accountability of the assessment to reflect on what

is to be measured.

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Conclusion

Any form of test has a profound effect on what and how students learn in the

classroom. Furthermore, tests act indirectly as one of the tools that drive classroom

instruction. It is highly important that the washback effects of tests should be considered

when an innovated new method of tests is implemented on a big scale. It is worthwhile

pointing out here that performing well on a test does not necessarily indicate good learning

or high standards and it only tells part of the story about the actual teaching and learning

(Cheng et al., 2004) as the case in Malaysia that getting A’s in exams doesn’t necessarily

means competent in the language communicatively. It is important to highlight the

significance to the educational community to understand the function of testing in relation to

many scopes of teaching and learning. Furthermore, evaluating the impact of assessment-

driven reform for our teachers, students, and stakeholders within the educational context is

encouraged to continually develop the assessment quality overtime. A shift to a school

based assessment requires teachers to be literate in assessment and shift teaching and

learning experience to accommodate with the changes. This is especially to equip

themselves with the knowledge of how to successfully assess different areas in which make

the assessment valid and reliable to inform on students achievements. Changing

assessment methods can drive teachers’ instructional practices, but that success is by no

means assured and it will take time.

(1642 words)

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