ABSTRACT

This article reports on a study that was carried out to explore the factors that contribute to a negative washback effect on English language teaching (ELT) in secondary schools in Bangladesh. Twelve secondary school teachers were interviewed to understand their perspectives on which factors influenced their pedagogical choices. The interview data were supplemented with secondary material, including official documents, media resources, and NGO (non-government organisation) reports. Drawing on a body of washback research and the empirical data, we constructed the basis for the argument that test-external socio-political and contextual factors may play a substantial role in shaping the nature of washback. It is suggested that emphasising a testing-teaching causal relationship may be overly simplistic, as language teaching may be affected not only by assessment factors but also by a complex of social-psychological, political, economic, and data-driven accountability factors in which testing and teaching are embedded. These insights have implications for scholars in language testing and assessment, policy makers, program designers, and managers in contexts where language tests are believed to affect language instruction negatively.

摘要

本文报告了一项研究，以探讨导致孟加拉国中学英语教学（ELT）受到负面反冲影响的因素。采访了十二名中学教师，以了解他们对影响他们的教学选择的因素的看法。采访数据还辅以辅助材料，包括官方文件，媒体资源和NGO（非政府组织）报告。借助大量的反冲研究和经验数据，我们为测试外部社会政治和环境因素可能在塑造反冲性质方面发挥了重要作用奠定了基础。建议强调测试与教学之间的因果关系可能过于简单，因为语言教学可能不仅受到评估因素的影响，而且还受嵌入了测试和教学的复杂的社会心理学，政治，经济和数据驱动的问责因素的影响。这些见解对语言测试和评估的学者，政策制定者，程序设计者以及在认为语言测试会对语言教学产生负面影响的环境中的管理人员产生了影响。