Washback is the degree to which an instructional or assessment instrument impacts all aspects of the learning process - students' motivation and study habits, educators' curriculum and materials decisions, etc. It can be either negative or positive. Discussions of washback are relevant to both the academic arena and in a business context, since examinees who take the TOEIC in a business context are usually learners who are outside of the strictly academic sphere, either through self-study or within private institutions or in-house programs that focus on test preparation. Although a standardized test such as TOEIC can have positive washback in individual students' cases, the most prevalent systemic impact that these tests have been observed to exert on the learning/teaching process is the practice of "teaching to the test." Teaching to the test simply means that educators let the contents of the test shape their curriculum choices, in order to secure higher test averages for their students.