IELTS Research Reports

Learning to play the ‘classroom tennis’ well:IELTS and international students in teacher educationcommunicate’. They thus felt that the school system tended to collapse all issues into an issue of‘language’. Schools, for example, tended to say that students were not listening to advice, but in factthe students were not understanding the advice because of lack of ‘school culture’ knowledge andwould not ask questions. Language testing, of course, cannot account for these factors and thus someargued that continually increasing IELTS scores was not an answer to these issues. Others, however,felt that ‘Since (the IELTS was raised to ‘7.0’) three years ago we’ve had fewer complaints fromschools about the English language proficiency of the international students we send out’.Academics again partly see their universities to blame, with the number of international studentsgrowing faster than schools could be prepared for them. One Faculty of Education with a relativelylarge cohort of such students serves a metropolitan area which is very Anglo-monocultural and withan identical teaching workforce. Academics from this Faculty felt that the gap was becoming harderto bridge with some schools, however, those schools involved in the Faculty’s targeted ‘internationalinitiative’ have grappled with these issues and it seems to be paying off. These are partnershiprelationships and rest on a different set of assumptions about who is responsible for preparing teachers,as well as throwing into relief questions about how one prepares teachers with a different set ofcapabilities, needs, demands and social capital from local students.A final issue that is worth mentioning in terms of language preparation and the diversity of languagetasks in which a teacher can be engaged, especially for Asian students, is the process of job-hunting:… recognising that you have to apply to each individual school, and you have to writedifferent essays to address the ‘desirables’ and ‘essentials ’that each school is looking out for.This is a ‘cultural shock’ for Asian students; they find themselves in a position where theyhave to sell themselves in interviews and their written applications. That is something theyare not comfortable doing. (They expect) qualifications alone will get you a job, not tellingpeople how good you are at communicating with parents.… In the second half of the year I actually spend more time on helping international studentsto see how to present themselves to employers and how to write an application for a jobbecause they’re horrible. They have to address all the selection criteria. We also have anassignment called the ‘Portfolio’ which is really helpful in the end but is a total mystery tothe students in the beginning. In the end it helps them to find all the evidence that they needto promote themselves in an interview for a job.7.8 What revisions, if any, has your Faculty made to entry procedures in the lightof this experience?At the time of writing, one Faculty from which interviewees were drawn is considering raising IELTSscores to ‘7.5’ to enter the course. Academics interviewed nevertheless felt that this causes a loss ofpotential of those lower than ‘7.5’. They argue that a score taken at a moment in time does not accountfor the ability of students to improve and that this is lessening the pool of people from whom todevelop teachers. Capacity for growth, they argue, is not being accounted for.A second Faculty will raise the IELTS score from 2010 to ‘7’, with ‘6.5’across all sub-tests. Priorto this, the Master of Teaching entry (6.5) had been lower than the Diploma of Education entry (7)because the former course was for international students only and was two years duration compared tothe shorter DipEd.IELTS Research Reports Volume 11115