View of ON HOW SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE VICTIMIZED BY THE ENGLISH PUBLIC EXAMINATION: A WASHBACK STUDY

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International Journal of Education and Pedagogy (IJEAP) eISSN: 2682-8464 [Vol. 1 No. 2 September 2019]

Journal website: http://myjms.moe.gov.my/index.php/ijeap

ON HOW SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE

VICTIMIZED BY THE ENGLISH PUBLIC EXAMINATION: A WASHBACK STUDY

Yahya Ameen Tayeb^1*

1 Faculty of Education, Hodeidah University, Hodeidah-Zabid, YEMEN

*Corresponding author: yahyaamin73@gmail.edu

Article Information:

Article history:

Received date : 23 July 2019 Revised date : 29 July 2019 Accepted date : 15 September 2019 Published date : 27 September 2019

To cite this document:

Tayeb, Y. (2019). ON HOW

SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE VICTIMIZED BY THE ENGLISH PUBLIC EXAMINATION - A

WASHBACK STUDY. International Journal Of Education And Pedagogy, 1(2), 54-62.

Abstract: As an extensive exit test, General Secondary English Examination (GSEE) is administered directly by the Ministry of Education. Due to its paramount importance, GSEE has an extreme washback effect on learners being the cornerstone of their future.

Consequently, students are on the horns of a dilemma thinking only of how to get high marks to be eligible to join university. This study aims to diagnose the GSEE washback effect on students being enslaved to the test. It centred on four pedagogical dimensions namely students’

learning styles, learning activities, attitudes and motivation. Mixed mode approach (qualitative and quantitative methods) was applied using classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, group discussions and a questionnaire of 42 items administered to 646 students. NVivo12 was used for analysing the qualitative data. SPSS/V22 was used for analysing the quantitative data where the inter-rater reliability test (Cronbach's Alpha) was (.90). The results revealed that the test had a great influence on learners (P<.001) mainly on their learning styles and motivation. Triangulation with the qualitative analysis confirmed the same implications.

The study provides a clear evidence of the exam washback on the components of the language learning processes and its influence on what and how the learners learn.

Keywords: GSEE, learning styles, washback, Yemen.

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1. Introduction

Recently, with the emergence of the third millennium, the term ‘washback’ has a special importance in the field of applied linguistics. While “a test is essentially a sample of questions of activities that reflect a large body of knowledge and mental processes associated with an academic subject area” (Rudner & Schafer, 2002, p. 39), high-stakes tests are those the results of which are seen – positively or negatively – by micro and macro stakeholders, as these tests have serious implications that immediately and directly affect them. Hence, public examinations have their own functions in any county. These functions can have positive or negative impact on the public stakeholders in general (macro level) and teachers and learners, in particular (micro level) (Azamatovna, 2019; Tayeb, Aziz, Ismail, & Khan, 2014).

The General Secondary English Examination (hereinafter referred to as the GSEE) is a public examination administered at the last stage of pre-tertiary education in Yemen after students complete six years of learning English beginning from the seventh grade (the second stage of the primary education) until the twelfth grade (the 3rd and the last level of the secondary school education). The test is entirely developed by the High Committee for Examinations (HCE), which is directly under the authority of the examinations department in the Ministry of Education, Yemen. School leavers take the test in June after completing the required tasks and exercises in all the examination subjects including English (Tayeb, Aziz, & Ismail, 2018). It is worth mentioning that investigating the phenomenon of washback in the Yemeni context is, at least to the knowledge of the researcher, the first study ever undertaken.

This study aims to investigate the washback influence of the GSEE on learners’ Learning Styles (LS), Learning Activities (LA), Learning Attitudes (LAT)and Learning Motivation (LM).

2. Literature Review

2.1 What is Literature Review?

English language teaching and learning in Yemen is of pressing concern. Because of the importance of GSEE in Yemen, learners are under two difficult choices of either to be subjected to the test which is difficult to get the required marks to enter the university or, unfortunately, to be dropped-out (Tayeb et al., 2014). Moreover, it has been argued that in Yemeni schools, the desired goals are not fully achieved and this is clearly reflected through the poor language performance of the students at secondary schools as well as at universities (Al-Tamimi, 2006;

Azman, Bhooth, & Ismail, 2013; Ba-Matraf, 1997). This indicates that the standard of English of learners is still low and it persists as a problem (Al-Tamimi, 2006).

In his study about the Middle Eastern students, (Pandian, 2008, p. 56) argued that students should be exposed to various establishments of support, to ensure that they are able to solve their challenges that are encountered as a result of their status as international students studying in a foreign land. Furthermore, because secondary school leavers are the products of classes which normally do not use English language, they tend to face problems in their university studies (Al- Tamimi, 2006). The most important reason beyond this is that they could not reach the suitable level of English language proficiency and gain the language skills that make them able to pursue their goals. As a result, some leaners may try to join some private institutions of higher quality

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with the hope that they may find some help to overcome the problem of English proficiency. This shows that Yemeni learners are not able to utilize their English as a result of teacher-dominated approach where learners rarely get the chance to communicate in English (Al-Hattami, 2012).

The effect of washback becomes stronger on the part of the learners and, consequently, teachers find themselves in a situation in which they have to ensure their learners pass the GSEE. Hence, English language teachers in Yemen are pressured to teach the whole teaching materials to students especially at the secondary levels preparing them for the GSEE exam. This becomes more confusing for teachers because they have no decision on “what to teach, how to teach, what grade to assign, which materials to use and how to manage the class,” (Ismail, 2009, p. 159).

Moreover, the test has a great impact on the learners, educational institutions, and society. It has argued that “although parents, schools and the Ministry of Education spend a lot of money and efforts to help learners manage the challenges of the GSEE, its washback effect is inevitable due to the high stakes it represents for the stakeholders, especially the students” (Tayeb et al., 2014, p.

97). Srinivasan and Chanda (2001) , well-known language testing experts at Hodeidah University, asserted that in Yemen, 'achievement' is still seen as a poor cousin of 'proficiency'. They justified that the reasons are “the effects of a sentence-bound structural approach to language teaching- testing, combined with (fostered by, if we take into account washback effects) the domination of the discrete-point testing tradition can be seen in the image of the language learner” (Srinivasan &

Chanda, 2001, p. 80).

Based on the above criticisms, it appears that there is an urgent need to systematically investigate the effects of the GSEE on Yemeni English learners.

3. Methods

Due the complexity of washback as a phenomenon, writing the research methodology puts a researcher in a dilemma (Watanabe, 2004). This is because, as argued by Alderson and Wall (1993), findings in a research must be incorporated in the areas of motivation and performance.

(Bailey, 1999) goes further asserting that the explanatory variables should be identified so it becomes possible to examine how washback works. The nature of this paper design is mostly of qualitative characteristic. This is because the main purpose is to understand the washback phenomenon in the Yemeni context which could more properly be achieved through explanation and description based on interviews, observation and open-close ended questionnaire which was conducted to the targeted group of participants (secondary school Yemeni English learners). In this way, quantitative method was then applied for the sake of triangulation to investigate the correlational relation among the variables and that will reflect the research validity and reliability.

3.1 Participants

Based on Watanabe (2004) who argues that social researches, of which language testing washback phenomenon is a part, must be based on sampling rather than selection because “selection refers to more general process of focusing and choosing what to study” whereas “sampling is a more specialized and restricted form” (2004, p. 29). However, as washback is of ‘information-rich nature,’ it becomes “normal to select various groups of participants rather than single population”

(p. 29) to investigate the phenomenon of washback from different perspectives.

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In this study, eight learners were requested for the individual interview and a total 646 students of the secondary school leavers (the 12th grade) from different areas, urban and rural, who were going to have the GSEE, answered the questionnaire to get their views towards the test. The students’

questionnaire was conducted in Arabic. The ultimate aim behind the diversity of methods in the study was to investigate the problem from different angles to get a better chance for triangulation which would state how the study was corroborated.

3.2 Data Analysis

According to Watanabe (2004) collected data should be analysed more than once. The purpose behind that is of two reasons. The first one is to identify the relevance of the different categories to investigate both the presence and the absence of the GSEE washback. This procedure was achieved through the of the qualitative data refinement of the different categories. The second reason is to calculate the frequency of items which belong to each category to find out to what extent these categories are relevant.

To clarify, the data collected through the targeted participants (i.e., the 30 English teachers) was analysed initially for the purpose of providing the researchers with more information so that it would become easy to manage the second procedure of the second phase of the data collection (i.e., data collected from the three chosen teachers for interviews). Later on, the whole collected data was dealt with as one unit to discriminate the data that may reflect proper answers for the research questions: Does GSEE’s washback exist? Which factor/s is/are more affected? The tool used for data analysis is the most appropriate software programme that usually used for analysing complex data, SPSS, version 22. Out of these methodological procedures, both descriptive as well as inferential analyses were applied. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and then analysed using codes and thematic categorization (see Tables 1).

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4. Results

As has been mentioned earlier, three research instruments were applied to measure students’ LS, LA, LAT ant LM. The first, observation of 39 English classes, were carried out to see how the three major learning factors are influenced by the GSEE. The students’ interactional role in the classroom activities was almost unpredicted. In other words, the classroom was totally administered by the teacher in such a way where students had less contribution being silently listening to their teachers teaching about topics related to the GSEE. Due to the teacher’s predomination on the class activities, the students’ role was almost receptive and, as a result, their

‘giving’ was mostly unpredicted. For instance, out of the 39 observed classes, only 13 classes were of predicted interaction with a percentage of 33.3% whereas in 26 classes, the students’ role was unpredicted with a percentage of 66.6%. This indicates that only one third of the classes were of predicted giving and in two thirds, the students’ role was unpredicted, see Figure 1.

Figure 1: Students’ interaction in the classroom (Request & Giving)

With regard to the students’ LS, it was observed that the language mostly used inside the classroom was Arabic which seemed to be the most of the students’ turn. Surprisingly, it was observed that English was mostly used by the teachers but, with regard to the students’ reaction, Arabic was the medium for their communication with their teachers. As the frequency test revealed, 29 of the total students were observed using Arabic 74.4% which means that about three quarters of the classes used Arabic. On the contrary, in only 10 classes, English was used by students with a percentage of 24.6% which means that in only a quarter of the classes, students used English as a medium of communication inside the classroom, see. This indicates that most of the students were unable to

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participate in the class using English because their major concern was to pass the GSEE and not on how to speak proper English.

In the second phase, the four research factors were elaborately discussed with the students and their opinions were analyzed in details. Out of the four factors investigated in this study, it was found that the LS factor is adapted according to the GSEE. To go even further, it seems that for the teachers and decision makers, learning the language is not as important as the exam because their main goal is how to help students pass and get the required marks for joining the university.

This might be the reason for why LS in the 3rd secondary classes are different from those in the first or second secondary classes. Therefore, the participant IM argues that “Learning styles of the third secondary students are different from those in the other classes because in this year students have to increase the time of study at homes. They must study for a long time. They must read the whole passages and try to ask their teacher in the classroom about all difficult questions. They must do all these things because GSEE means the future of the students.”

Accordingly, it is important to mention here that the 3rd secondary students have two difficult choices namely the difficulty of the exam and the fear of failure which means the loss of their future. Thus, one could state here that LAT factor has been misused by the GSEE due to the negative washback effect it bears for not only students being study for the test but also teachers who are also forced to teach to the test. RH indicated this point when she said:

The GSEE greatly affected my attitude. I think because of the effect of this exam, a student feels very frightened because he/she imagines it as a ghost or nightmare which threatens his/her future because it means future for the students. I see that the test is a terror. I feel that I will be a victim if I fail in the GSEE.

From the above excerpt, it is clear that the students have been ‘victimized’ by the GSEE and instead of using the exam to ensure how students have been improved in learning the language, it almost used to show how students have become frustrated and have negative attitudes towards the language. This, in fact, reflects the danger of the GSEE on the LAT towards learning English in Yemen. Table 2 summarizes the students’ viewpoints about how the GSEE affects the LAT.

Table 2: Students’ description of the GSEE No. Students’

Codenames Gender Description of GSEE

1 RH F ghost; nightmare

2 IM M gruesome; dreadful ghost

3 NdA F Horror; dreadful

4 HN F frightening; dreadful ghost; gruesome

5 GM M gruesome or dreadful ghost

6 NgA F Fearful

7 HD F horror; fearful

8 AT M very difficult

The third, and the last phase of the study was devoted for the quantitative data collection and analysis. The SPSS/V22 was used for analysing the data where the inter-rater reliability test (Cronbach's Alpha) was (0.90). The students’ four factors (i.e., LS, LA, LAT & LMO) were also were dealt with separately and in pairs. The results revealed that the four factors are generally

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affected by the GSEE. As could be seen in Table 3, the items of four factors are normally distributed where Skewness and Kurtosis values of the learners’ factor are -.391 and .158 respectively with standard errors of .097 for Skewness and .193 for Kurtosis. As could be observed, the whole values of normality are < ±1.0 which correspond to the standard values (see Table 3 &

Figure 2).

Table 2: Students’ description of the GSEE

Descriptives Statistic Std. Error

Students' Factor

Mean 3.4543 .01793

95% Confidence Interval for Mean

Lower Bound 3.4191 Upper Bound 3.4895

5% Trimmed Mean 3.4665

Median 3.4832

Variance .205

Std. Deviation .45247

Minimum 1.80

Maximum 4.48

Range 2.68

Interquartile Range .59

Skewness -.391 .097

Kurtosis .158 .193

Figure 2: Histogram of Normality Distribution of the Learners’ Factor

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5. Conclusion

Due the importance of the GSEE to the 3^rd secondary students, the vast majority of the participants in this study asserted that students, and all other stakeholders, could spend precious and cheap for passing the exam with high scores. This study comes in line with the study by Saglam and Farhady (2019), who concludes that students are inclined to be test-oriented

“because they claimed to value activities that were oriented towards the test or test-specific coaching” (p. 183). However, it could further be concluded that the phenomenon of cheating emerges as a serious phenomenon which could be thoroughly investigated as a dangerous output of the harmful washback of examinations. Hence, this study recommends that further research could come up with significant results in this regard. This study supports the study conducted by (Hazaea & Tayeb, 2018) where both conclude that much attentions needs to be paid on teachers’

testing literacy so that the focus will be on how to enhance the knowledge, skills and practices of language testing.

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