Senior secondary school certificate English paper examination washback in Dhaka

Abstract

Washback is a phenomenon in applied linguistics which sometimes refers to activities which language tutores involve themselves in because of a test.These activities ordinarily would not have taken place but because of the test at hand the teachers and learners are seen to participate in such teaching and learning activities. And as such these activities may promote or negatively affect the goal of language learning. The main purpose of this research was to find out the effects Senior Secondary School Certificate (SSCE) has on teaching and learning, in the limelight of its effects too on students, in the West Coast Region , Brikama, The Gambia. The SSCE English paper is a compulsory paper for all the test takers and it is so powerful that it determines who gains admission into tertiary institutions of learning or not. A student who has nine A’s in other subjects but fails the English paper is seen to have failed the entire exam because of not passing the English paper. This research paper used mixed methods approaches, which are qualitative and quantitative designs. The participants here consist of ninety- four students and ten teachers. The methods of data collection included questionnaires and structured interviews. The research studies revealed that, both teachers and students put more focus on tests, which makes them to be specific in only test taking strategies and approaches. It appears both students and teachers ignored communication language skills rather they focus on testing taking skills, which alluded to the reasons of mass failures ever recorded. . In light of the results, this study recommended that the English paper exam questions should be made to reflect the objectives of the curriculum, so that even if teachers continue to teach to the test the major goal of language learning (proficiency) can still be attained.