The intensity and direction of CET Washback on Chinese college students' test-taking strategy use

Abstract

Test-taking strategies are the test-taking processes which the students have consciously selected, and can be regarded as the strategies used in test context. The College English Test (CET) is a large-scale high-stakes education test for college non-English majors in China, which conducts impact on College English teaching and learning, namely "washback". Although researches concerning the washback on test-taking strategy use has been conducted in different cultural backgrounds, few studies are focused on Chinese college students. This paper analyzes questionnaire data from 284 Chinese non-English majors, in order to explore the characteristics of their test-taking strategy use, as well as the intensity and direction of CET washback on it. The findings show that the students' test-taking strategy use is test-oriented rather than focusing on language learning and use. CET washback on test-taking strategy use is not intense, moderately promoting cognitive strategy use and weakly promoting test management and test-wiseness strategy use, and the direction CET washback on test-taking strategy use tends to be positive. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.