An investigation into teachers’ perceptions of the national achievement test of primary English

The purpose of this study is to investigate how primary school teachers of English perceive the national achievement test of primary English (hereafter NATPE). It also aims to investigate to what extent the washback effect of NATPE has on teachers' practice in their teaching. For these purposes, the teachers’ usual way of teaching was surveyed, and an NATPE test contents were analyzed from the perspectives of teachers. From this analysis, some critical issues were raised, such as the dissonance between what the teachers do before and after the test implementation, and the impact of the test on the teachers' perception and their practices. To carry out the research, a questionnaire consisting of some open-ended questions and some close-ended ones was administerd to over 100 teachers from different areas. An in-depth interview was also conducted to 15 questionnaire respondents in order to consolidate the data obtained from the questionnaire. The results indicate that teachers do not have enough information about the NATPE in terms of the four level distinctions of English achievement, and the differences between the neighbouring levels, the way of determining the cut-off point of each level. The results also show that teachers made efforts by employing a number of methods and strategies to help students prepare for the test, and compensate for their weakness after the test.