Abstract:

In 1989 Arthur Hughes defined backwash effect as the effect of testing on teaching. Originally, backwash effect can be both positive and negative. Depending on how testing procedures are administered and incorporated in the teaching process, they can either facilitate skills acquisition by enhancing learners’ motivation or hamper the progress by daunting them. The situation comes to its worse when examinations start playing a dominant role in the educational process, with all the time and efforts being devoted to grinding learners in the test.

Unfortunately, this is generally the case with EGE (Unified State Exam) preparation in Russian state schools. EGE is the final examination, taken by school students in their last year, which includes listening, reading, writing and speaking sections as well as the tasks to check students’ grammar and vocabulary knowledge. Seen as the ultimate goal of the whole 11 year learning process, it distorts the mechanisms of natural language acquisition and adversely affects the teachers’ choice of materials and techniques employed.

This paper estimates the influence of EGE preparation on classroom practice in Russian state schools and suggests the ways of transferring the focus of education from testing to teaching students.

Keywords:

Backwash effect, EGE (Unified State Exam), testing, teaching, language acquisition.