The washback effects of high-stakes examination papers are critical in informing teaching and learning, and particularly those teachers who face compounded challenges of poor content knowledge and teaching in multilingual and multicultural English home language (EHL) classrooms. This paper examines the assessment of the visual literacy (VL) component of the EHL curriculum for Grade 12, school-exiting learners, as despite of its prolific presence in the media and society, VL poses severe challenges for teaching and learning. Drawing on the qualitative paradigm, I present a detailed analysis of 5 consecutive examination papers by focusing on the section, 'Language in Context' which comprises two questions: 'Analysing advertisements' and 'Understanding other aspects of the media'. The test design, specifically text selection and the questions asked, is analysed to address the following issues: the alignment of the assessment of VL with the EHL curriculum and the degree of authenticity of the assessment. I then consider the implications of the direction of washback for teachers. Mindful that research on washback underscores the interaction between tests, teaching and learning rather than the influence of tests on teaching, I conclude that while it is not possible to address all the goals of VL, both construct relevance and construct underrepresentation could be effective teaching tools for enhancing critical VL skills in the language classroom.
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