Aspects of the Impact of Language Tests on Students’ Lifeworld: An Analysis of the Iranian B.A. University Entrance Exam Based on Habermas’s Social Theory

Abstract

Testing has been so intrinsically bound to today’s modern life whose foregone consequences are often taken for granted and is accepted widely as unavoidable side effects or sometimes even desired effects of an inevitable social event. The aim of this study is to investigate the aspects of the impact of Iranian B.A. University Entrance Exam on the lifeworld of the students who are about to take it. To this end, the analysis was conducted using Habermas’s Social Theory. There were 349 fourth-grade students participating in the study from four different provinces including Zanjan, Alborz, Mazandaran and Shiraz. The data was gathered using a researcher-made questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with 10 students as well as classroom observation in two subsequent years qualitative and quantitative analyses of data revealed that the exam is regarded as an inevitable social practice by the participants whose life world is exploited and manipulated by the exam as a part of the system. The pressure for result-based accountability placed upon the test takers, on the other hand, leads to creation of some specific norms, provides system control tools, enhances instrumental rationality and establishes the social order of its own. The implications for language testing and teaching are discussed.

Keywords

• Washback
• test effect
• Habermas’s social theory