大学英语四六级写作及其写作教学(1)(3)
2015-06-26 01:02
导读：Influence on the average teachers that they are often helpful to decide the kind of teaching that takes place before the tests. Over the years language teachers who want to be able to use tests as par
Influence on the average teachers that they are often helpful to decide the kind of teaching that takes place before the tests. Over the years language teachers who want to be able to use tests as part of their classroom teaching[8].
The effect of testing and learning is known as backwash [9]. Backwash can be harmful or beneficial. If a test is regarded as important, the preparation for it can come to dominate all teaching and learning activities. And if the test content and test techniques are at variance with the objectives of the course, then there is likely to be harmful backwash. If the skill of writing, for example, is tested only by multiple-choice items, then there is great pressure to practice such items rather than practice the skill of writing itself. This is clearly undesirable. However, backwash needs not always be harmful; indeed it can be positively beneficial. When the teaching is good and proper, and the testing is not, teaching is then likely to suffer from harmful backwash. When teaching is poor or inappropriate, testing is then able to exert a beneficial backwash. Testing should be supportive of good teaching and , when necessary, exert a corrective influence on bad teaching. If testing always had a beneficial backwash on teaching, it would have a much better reputation amongst teachers.
Besides, the teaching profession can also make two contributions to the improvement of testing: they can write better tests themselves, and they can put pressure on others, including professional testers and examining boards, to improve their tests [14] For example, Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) originally consisted of only multiple-choice items, but no writing tests. Many years passed, testers maintained that it was simply impossible to test the writing ability of hundreds of thousands of candidates by means of a composition: it was impracticable and the results, anyhow, would be unreliable. “Yet in 1986 a writing test (Test of Written English), in which candidates actually have to write for 30minutes, was introduced as a supplement to TOEFL, and already many colleges in the United States are requiring applications to take this test in addition to TOEFL. The principal reason given for this change was pressure from English language teachers who had finally convinced those responsible for the TOEFL of the overriding need for a writing test which would provide beneficial backwash”[10]. 3. Testing the Writing Skills
（科教范文网http://fw.ΝsΕΑc.com编辑）
3.1 The writing skills
Four major skills in communication through language are often broadly defined as listening, speaking, reading and writing. In many situations where English is taught for general purposes, these skills should be carefully integrated and used to perform as many genuinely communicative tasks as possible. Where this is the case, it is important for the test writer to concentrate on those types of test items, which appear directly relevant to the ability to use language for real-life communication. As regards writing, test writers usually assess the students’ writing ability in the form of letters, reports, memos, messages, instructions, and accounts of past events, etc.
