THE WASH BACK EFFECT OF THE ETHIOPIAN UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE ENGLISH EXAMINATION (EUEE) ON STUDENTS'LANGUAGE LEARNING PERFORMANCE

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the Wash back effects of the Ethiopian University Entrance English Examination on the Students’ learning performance. To achieve the above purpose, qualitative and quantitative research methods were used. For this study 58 grade 12 students from those 4 sections (A-D), 5 English language teachers, for interview,3 teachers for classroom observations participated .The students were selected using probability sampling systematic sampling method. On other hand, teachers for interview and class room observation were selected comprehensively since their number is not large. All the students’ and teachers were taken for this study from Shirka Secondary School. The instruments used to collect data were questionnaire for students’ Interview and classroom observations for teachers’ and documents analysis. The data obtained from the participants’ quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The findings of this study revealed that the EUEEE had a negative wash back effects on the students’ language learning and language performance. For example, some of the students were learning English as a foreign language not to develop their language performance but simply to score a passing mark in the EUEEE and then join higher education. Most teachers were also EUEEE booklet contents and items area dependent. The methodologies teachers used were also most of time teacher’ centered because, their main focus was just to prepare students for the exam than developing their language performance level. Finally, on the basis of the findings, it was recommended that in order to develop the students’ language performance, the  short comings identified in the process of TEFL and the EUEEE should have been taken into consideration. 5