IELTS Research Reports

IntroductionUniversity, and the IELTS partners. Outcomes of both studies were reported in research papers presentedat the Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) in Ottawa in June 2005; a research paper onthe first by O’Neill, Buckendahl, Plake and Taylor was published in the peer review journal LanguageAssessment Quarterly in late 2007. As Merrifield comments, it would be good to see professionalassociations commissioning more test validation studies of this type, including analysis of workplacelanguage skills for the various professions.On the sensitive issue of European legislation that currently exempts European nationals from languageassessment, the IELTS partners will continue to work with the relevant departments and agencies in theUK and Ireland to provide appropriate advice. And on the policy issue over whether or not to acceptIELTS scores from more than one test sitting or administration, it may be helpful to clarify that this hasalways been a matter for the user organisation to determine, rather than a stipulation from the IELTSpartners. If a professional association wishes to accept an individual’s best score outcomes from two ormore IELTS tests, then they are at liberty to do so.Merrifield highlights several perceived risk factors for the future of IELTS including the challenge posedto IELTS’ market share by iB TOEFL and by newer tests such as Pearson’s Academic Test of English.Market competition may be of less concern, however, than pressure from user organisations to ‘tailor’the test content more closely to their professional domain of interest. IELTS (and its predecessor ELTS)was originally designed to be appropriate to the academic context and has served well in that capacityfor over 25 years. More recently, some professions have found that the test can also serve their needswhen they require practitioners to demonstrate appropriate evidence of general English proficiency. Inthe mid-1990s IELTS moved away from discipline-specific modules largely because of the impossibilityof ensuring fair, relevant and comparable test versions across differing disciplinary fields. Prior toApril 1995 IELTS included three discipline-specific subtests for both Reading and Writing - AcademicModules A, B and C – which were designed to meet the needs of candidates in three broad disciplineareas: Physical Sciences and Technology (PST), Life and Medical Sciences (LMS), and Arts and SocialSciences (ASS). Despite its attractiveness, this sub-division of the test into three discipline-specificsubtests caused some administrative concern because test centres and receiving institutions were oftenunclear about the appropriate subtests for different higher education courses. Furthermore, it was notalways clear whether it would be better to match a candidate to a discipline-specific subtest on the basisof their previous or their intended disciplinary area; even within a broad disciplinary area, the subspecialitiescould be so varied, e.g. geology and aeronautical engineering within Physical Sciences andTechnology, that candidates taking the same module would not necessarily encounter texts and topicsrelated to their own disciplinary field. Feedback from IELTS administrators and examiners supported areduction in the number of discipline-specific subtests. At the same time, monitoring of usage showedthat the majority of IELTS candidates (around 75%) were taking Module C. In light of these findings, theInternational Editing Committee recommended research to investigate the effectiveness of a one-moduleapproach and to ensure that Academic candidates would not be disadvantaged if they were to take asingle module for each of the Academic Reading and writing subtests. The results of this project, togetherwith results from important research into second language reading and ESP testing by Caroline Clapham(1993, 1995, 1996), showed that a single test for all academic disciplines did not discriminate for oragainst candidates of any discipline area. For this reason, the three discipline-specific subtests in IELTSwere replaced in 1995 by one Academic Reading Module and one Academic Writing Module. Despitethe desire for a more ‘tailored’ approach, it is doubtful that subject-specific content could be reintroducedinto IELTS in such a way that the test could meet the expectations of the many different academic andprofessional domains that are now using it; moreover, the production of such multiple and comparabletest versions across diverse disciplines would be neither viable nor sustainable. Merrifield’s point is wellmade, nonetheless, about the need to ensure that existing and future stakeholders clearly understand thedifference between the Academic and General Training variants of IELTS, and the IELTS partners willcontinue to draw attention to the important distinction between the two versionsIELTS Research Reports Volume 1111