IELTS Research Reports

A multiple case study of the relationship between the indicators of students’ English languagecompetence on entry and students’ academic progress at an international postgraduate universityCategoryStudent numbersTotal number of students 177Cranfield Health 4School of Applied Sciences 73School of Engineering 53School of Management 47All students with an English test score 118Students with an English test score alone 68All students interviewed and with an English test score 50All students interviewed 61Students interviewed but without an English test score 11Interview with linguist 33Interview with Course Director 29Interview with Course Director and linguist 1Total number of recorded English test scores 141Students with more than one English test score 20Students with IELTS 50Students with TOEFL 41Students with TOEIC 17Students with other tests – Cambridge ESOL etc 19Students with GMAT 13Students with overall IELTS scores of 6/6.5 with a sub-score of 5.5 or below 9Table 2. Methods used to assess students’ English language proficiency for admission toCranfield of a purposive sample of 177 students in 2007/8 (taken from Cranfield Registry data)Distinctions were apparent in selection processes between Schools and programmes. Students (18)applying for places in SOM were more likely to present more than one test score whether these wererepeated tests of the same or different types. Amongst these is the General Management Aptitude Test,GMAT, which is not a test of English language ability per se, but assesses analytical writing, verbalability and numerical reasoning and is widely used in academic business and management disciplines.All the students with GMAT were applying for places in SOM courses. There were also variationsbetween Masters programmes in the extent to which interviews were cited by Course Directors as amethod of gathering evidence. This was independent of interviews with other members of Cranfieldstaff. One Course Director in SOE interviewed almost half of the listed NNES students (9 out of 20)whereas one course each in CH and SOM did not mention Course Director interviews and three othersin SOE and SAS interviewed less than 10% of NNES students within the cohort (see Table 3).IELTS Research Reports Volume 11145