Washback and Content Alignment

• In Event: National English Ability Test in Korea

Abstract

In many of Asian countries, English language testing is one of the main pillars of school gate (Ross, 2008). In these countries, English competency is not only an important asset for individual or the country in the global era, but also an important subject of the high-stake test for college entrance. For this reason, the format of English Language Testing for college entrance in Asian countries and other EFL countries have a great impact on teaching and learning English. Korea is one of the countries that has highly competitive college entrance test, which is called CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test). Since the content and format of CSAT have great washback effect, CSAT English test has been either facilitating or debilitating the English Education in Korea. Test-driven educational policies may not be desirable, however, is inevitable to align educational content and the assessment framework for the successful implementation of innovation policies.
One of the important Educational issues and policies in Korea is “English Education Innovation to Enhance Practical English Education in Schools”. Among the strategies for English Innovation, the most powerful one for changing school education is to introduce new English test, which is National English Ability Test. The rationale to develop NEAT is to promote and enhance practical and communicative English education in school, since the test will include speaking and writing section. CSAT has been evaluated as providing positive washback in listening skill, but since the fact that CSAT does not directly assess speaking and writing skill has yielded negative washback of weakening speaking and writing instruction in the classrooms. The experts and government officials involved in the policy making in 2006 thought that unless we change the format of English test, the efforts for English Education Innovation would not succeed.
The NEAT includes four skill domains such as reading, listening, speaking and writing and the test is being developed as an IBT test. The test is currently being developed through preliminary tests , and in the year 2012 the test will be launched. In 2012, the government will decide whether CSAT English test will be replaced with NEAT and if it is so, the replacement of CSAT English test with NEAT will be applied in 2015. The test is composed of 3 levels. The level 1 is for college students and college graduates while level 2 and level 3 are developed for high school students. The most important aspect of NEAT is that unlike CSAT, this national-level English test includes speaking and writing domain and will be aligned well with the content of current and upcoming new English curriculum. If the test is successfully landed, it will change the English education in Korea tremendously.

Author

• Kyung-Ae Jin, Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation