Washback
TOEFL has gained extraordinary power worldwide because it is used to accept some international students into American universities while rejecting others. It is believed that tests in general and high-stakes tests like TOEFL in particular, have a tremendous impact on students and teachers, even on society and education systems at large.
Techniques needed in the test are taught as core subjects in the syllabus. The fact that some learners who get a high score in TOEFL but cannot express themselves properly might due to this kind of negative washback which is named “learning for the test”. Additionally, TOEFL scores do not measure students’ actual language performance accurately. A negative impact happens when students define their own English proficiency according to the TOEFL strictly. It is quite possible for students to be successful communicating with native speakers of English orally and in written but not successful on the TOEFL iBT. Almost every formal test has these weaknesses in common, since its result means a lot to test takers.
When it comes to TOEFL’s impact on teachers, it is positive by and large. In the past, most of the teachers conducted writing classes that focused on language structure and discrete grammatical items. There was no integrated skills work. In order to prepare students for integrated tasks in writing section, teachers begin to teach students how to summarize properly, how to paraphrase, and how to select important information from input flood. Those abilities will be extremely useful for students who are going to study in the U.S. However, point out, we cannot simply assume that a test will automatically affect instructional practice. Therefore, whether TOEFL iBT will have a positive washback upon ESL and EFL pedagogy heavily depend on teachers’ English proficiency level, their English teaching ability, and their teaching philosophy.