International large-scale assessments are now part of the educational landscape in many countries and often feed into major policy decisions. Yet, such assessments also provide data sets for secondary analysis that can address key issues of concern to educators and policymakers alike. Traditionally, such secondary analyses have been based on a…

The way in which public examinations influence teaching and learning is commonly described as "washback" or backwash. This study examined the nature and scope of the impact of a public examination on English teaching in Taiwan to add to the existing literature on testing washback in an English-as-a-second-language context. The relational…