IELTS Research Reports

Wayne Sawyer and Michael Singhhave to encompass those abilities. They also need to be able to use speculative languagebecause it is very important in education, whichever subject area you’re working with.Reasonable control of conditionals is important as well…These characteristics need to bepresent, along with intelligible pronunciation. By intelligibility I don’t mean ‘mainstream’,because there is no mainstream. So I do not mean necessarily imitating an Australian accent.I accept diversity but (require) intelligibility of speech.The conditions driving some Australian universities to recruit international students was noted byteacher educators and questioned on the grounds of students’ marginal English language proficiency.This was noted in some Faculties as the tension between academics wanting higher IELTS scoresand ‘people making the decisions higher up’ wanting lower scores in order to maximise internationalstudent numbers – the tension identified by Feast (2002). However, it needs to be noted that in otherFaculties being discussed here, many of the LBOTE students are already Permanent Residents and notpart of a cohort on student visas.Some of the students who are on student visas enter teacher education programs through avenuescreated by universities themselves, such as through an English language college. The Englishproficiency of international students entering through these means was generally seen as relativelyweak (‘They haven’t really got up to speed and they’re not given another IELTs test before they enterthe university course’) and again seen as part of the broader university drive to enrol internationalstudents into courses. One concern about using university Language Centres was the sometimesunrealistic expectations by university management about how quickly international students couldincrease their English language proficiency. Another concern was the considerable pressure on theuniversity language and learning support staff.Proficiency in the English language is a complex issue in itself, subsuming a web of inter-related issues:■■functional English■■the technical language of the subject these students teach■■academic English - the critical and analytical■■■■■■the spoken and written language demands of the profession in general: not justfunctioning ‘on their feet’ in the classroom, but producing material for students,communicating with parents etc.the everyday language of the pupils in their classroomsthe ability to be able to transform subject knowledge into explanations that areunderstandable by their pupilsAcademics saw the need for assistance across this whole spectrum of language. Even havingknowledge about language (such as grammar, of which many students see themselves as having goodknowledge) is not the same as producing and understanding language. Academics find that studentscan have big gaps in understanding and though students learn to use the language enough to ‘getthrough’ the test, the ability to teach in the language is at another level. Perhaps only occupationspecifictesting can address this. One academic argued that in her experience, making a mistake orsaying the wrong thing led students from some cultural groups to withdraw, and not engage, leading inturn to lecturers and others not seeing their problems. Another academic highlighted written Englishas the key problem, identifying grammar, vocabulary and some semantic issues as of most importance.There are also a number of other issues in language:106 www.ielts.org