Asian Association for Language Assessment

Washback, the influence of assessment (testing) on teaching and learning, has been an educational phenomenon persistently studied through many perspectives in the field of language assessment. Since the seminal work of Alderson & Wall (1993) posing the question of – “Does washback exist?”, a large persistent growing amount of washback studies have been conducted around the world. Washback in Language Testing: Research Contexts and Methods (Cheng, Watanabe & Curtis, 2004) is an early book collection of washback studies and remains to be the only book exploring the multifaceted aspects of teaching and learning influenced by assessment (testing) globally. Asia has been a focal instructional context where assessment (testing) is heightened and studied due to the power of testing (see Li, 1990 – How Powerful Can a Language Test Be? The MET in China). China is also the birthplace of its imperial examination (科舉考試), which influenced modern testing around the world (O’Sullivan & Cheng, 2022). This plenary speech will illustrate the research journey, and paradigm shifts that washback researchers have gone through over the past 30 years in language testing and assessment.