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The Educational Review, USA

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Article Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/er.2018.09.002

A Brief Review of Washback Studies in the South Asian Countries

Nasreen Sultana

Faculty of Education, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

*Corresponding author: Nasreen Sultana, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education

Published: September 18,2018

Abstract

Influence of tests on teaching and learning, which is known as washback, has garnered attention among the researchers and scholars because of the ever-growing testing in-dustry worldwide. Scores of the high stakes language tests are increasingly used as the gatekeeper to higher education, better employment or immigration to a different coun-try. Acknowledging the importance of studying the influence of test, several washback studies have been conducted in the past 20 years targeting various aspects of how tests influence teaching and learning. However, washback research lacks critical input from the extreme test-oriented South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), where tests have an immense influ-ence on all levels of stakeholders. Therefore, this paper systematically reviews the lim-ited studies conducted in this region to explore the nature of washback in its local con-texts as well as to reveal the research gaps for future washback researchers.

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How to cite this paper

A Brief Review of Washback Studies in the South Asian Countries

How to cite this paper: Sultana, N. (2018). A Brief Review of Washback Studies in the South Asian Countries. The Educational Review, USA, 2(9), 468-474.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/er.2018.09.002