the wash back effect of high school examinations on iranian efl learners’ language learning beliefs

the phenomenon of how tests influence teaching and learning is commonly described as “wash back”in language instruction. literature indicates that wash back effect is a complex concept that becomeseven more complicated under different interpretations of the wash back phenomenon in teaching andlearning. in the present study, some definitions of wash back and its two major types were introduced,and also the relationship between wash back effect of high school examinations and the learners’ languagelearning beliefs was investigated. to carry out this survey study, 120 female students were randomlyselected from different high schools in kermanshah. they were students of different grades inhigh school, 30% in the first, 35% in the second and 35% in the third grade. the participants weregiven two questionnaires to assess the wash back effect of high school examinations and their languagelearning beliefs. the wash back questionnaire selected from nikoopour (2005) consisted of 42items with a reliability of 0.82, which was designed based on a likert scale. the second instrumentwas the so-called balli questionnaire selected from horwitz (1987), including 34-items, and designedto assess the learners’ language learning beliefs (hereafter lllb). the present study focusedon the relationship between the wash back effect of high school english examinations and the students’language learning beliefs. the results indicated that the students agreed on the wash back effectof english high school examinations. also, they agreed with the correspondence between differentfactors of learners’ language learning beliefs and foreign language learning.