IELTS Research Reports

Gaynor Lloyd-Jones, Charles Neame and Simon Medaneyexaminations are scheduled in January and April. Students have only short leave breaks at Christmasand Easter and the customary summer holiday period is spent on individual research projects. Highvalue is attached to the group project because of the opportunities it affords for work outside academiathrough team working and/or the relevance of the project to a particular company or industry. This is notmerely academic since the Cranfield specialisms of management and aerospace are themselves highlymultinational areas of practice. Apart from the MBA cohort which exceeds 100, class size varies between10 and 80 students and this small class size is reflected in Cranfield being ranked first in the UK andeleventh in the world for the staff student ratio in the THE World University Rankings in 2007.In a recent research study into the influence of student diversity on teaching and learning at Cranfield,English language emerged as the prime topic for both students and staff (Lloyd-Jones et al, 2007).Lecturers reported concern about the standard of students’ English language competence, particularlyin academic writing. Whilst listening and speaking skills generally improved over the first two tothree months, students’ writing did not make concomitant progress. There was also concern about theinfluence of group size and dynamics on teaching and learning. Because of a preference for socializingwithin the mother tongue group, cohorts where one mother tongue group is in the majority may hinderEnglish language development and cultural integration. Nor are the consequences simply confined tothe national group concerned. As non-native English speaking students were keen to improve theirEnglish and welcomed constructive feedback about their abilities, there were good reasons from aninstitutional perspective to investigate English language proficiency in greater depth.In summary, Cranfield University contrasts with the settings of previous studies, by virtue of beingexclusively postgraduate, in boasting a diverse international student body, in a commitment to appliedknowledge and in its bias towards science and engineering disciplines. It therefore provides anopportunity to conduct comparative case study research which may validate and extend our existingknowledge of NNES student selection procedures and rationales (Ward Schofield, 2000).4 AIMS OF THE STUDYThe overall purpose of the study is to explore current admission practices in relation to Englishlanguage testing and the consequences of selection decisions upon academic progress and the need forongoing academic English support at an international, postgraduate UK university.The study has the following aims:1 To describe and explain Course Directors’ admission practices and experience in relationto IELTS scores.2 To examine the relationship between non-native English speaking students’ pre-admissionIELTS scores and theira. academic progress andb. ongoing English language support needs3 To compare the consequences of different admission criteria and practices uponpostgraduate students’ academic progress in a variety of courses.140 www.ielts.org