IELTS Research Reports

Gaynor Lloyd-Jones, Charles Neame and Simon MedaneyCourse Directors are encouraged to interview applicants but there are resource implications so itis a matter of personal choice to what extent they do so. One SOM Course Director had chosen tointerview as a matter of routine and was convinced that the standard of entrants had risen as a result.Extract 2“When I’m talking about interviewing it’s for the majority of overseas candidates. So this ispartly about providing verification of information that has been provided, it’s partly aboutassessing their suitability or their experience, their motivation and so forth but it’s also anopportunity to get an idea about English language ability as well …………… I have foundthat with overseas students you do need to delve into some of the detail because sometimesthe information on the application form is not always 100% complete or accurate so it’sworth having a discussion about some of the details. We use interviews selectively but weare using them increasingly because we’re getting higher quality candidates overall.”SOM1 Course DirectorSelection practices in SOE share some features with SOM, principally in adherence to institutionalrequirements for test scores. However, there are no guidelines for selection at School level and three ofthe four Course Directors did not interview students routinely. There are larger numbers of EPP studentsadmitted in the School, 56 out of around 175 students on the sampled programmes in this part of theresearch. SOE Course Directors display more autonomy in managing the selection process since two ofthe four interviewed described distinctive and contrasting practices which merit further description.As already mentioned, SOE1 was particularly concerned with NNES selection because of students’poor writing ability, an opinion that was shared by other teachers on his programme. Consequently,two years ago he had raised the entry requirement for the programme from IELTS 6.5 to 7 but heremained unconvinced of any gains in improvements in writing. The admissions records show that 18NNES applicants presented appropriate English test scores and two borderline students with IELTSscores of 6.5 were admitted conditional on completion of the Summer Programme. SOE2, on the otherhand, interviewed the majority of the NNES applicants for his course; the admission records showhe interviewed nine of 19 NNES students for entry in 2007/8, the highest proportion of interviewsof any programme in the pilot study. Six of the remaining students presented English test scores andothers were interviewed by Cranfield staff. One of the latter students was advised to take the SummerProgramme. The Course Director regarded the interview as an opportunity, first and foremost, to gaugethe technical ability and, after that, the linguistic proficiency of the applicant, as displayed in Extract 3.Extract 3“I ask them about their technical background and through that they have to use a fair bitof English describing what they’ve done what their aspirations are, what they want to doafter they’ve Cranfield. Why they want to come to Cranfield? Things like that. We use itas a technical interview just to check that they are ok with the material and that they arehappy with content of the course. That’s the thing I’m most concerned with. I mean, mostof these students are taught English at their own university. They’re pretty good. They don’treally have any problems with the taught material. So spoken English is fine. The only, theareas where, that sometimes causes problems is probably the thesis project and writing anextensive report.”SOE2 Course Director152 www.ielts.org