چكيده
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes differ significantly towards high-stakes and low-stakes tests. After coping with this general goal, each attitudinal factor is carefully looked upon for the sake of describing its probable difference across the responses that the test takers provided to the translated version of TAS (Test Attitude Survey) designed by Arvey et al. (1990). The questionnaire includes 42 questions distributed unequally between 8 factors: 1. Motivation (10 questions), 2.Lack of concentration (4 questions), 3. Belief in tests (4 questions), 4. Comparative anxiety (10 questions), 5. Test ease (4 questions), 6. External attribution (5 questions), 7. Future effect (3 questions), and 8. Preparation (2 questions). Third grade of high school English language exit examination was selected as an instance of high-stakes tests; besides, end-of-the-course, teacher-made tests of general English courses of universities were considered as symbols of low-stakes ones. 232 male and female participants filled in the questionnaires about the tests they had just passed. After crossing out 22 inconveniently answered questionnaires, it was indicated that of the remaining 210, 122 were answered by high-stakes test takers and 88 by low-stakes ones. The questionnaires were scored on Likert scale and gathered data was subjected to appropriate statistical analyses of Mann-Whitney U-test. The findings of this study illustrated that, in general, there is no significant difference between these two groups of test takers’ attitudes towards the high-stakes and low-stakes tests. Besides, regarding 8 attitudinal factors, only 4 were shown to be significantly different, namely Motivation, Lack of Concentration, Future effect, and Preparation. On the basis of these findings, a number of pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research will be presented and discussed.
