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 universityInterviewer: “Do they make any further progress or remain like that throughout the course?”Course Director: “No, I think they come round. I think they come round in the secondsemester. That’s why I think it’s not their English, it’s more a cultural aspect but that couldbe argued to be not the case. You could argue that three months here improves their English.I’m not sure at this point.”SOM2 Course DirectorIn general, though there was agreement that oral skills are not a major problem which may be aconsequence of the Cranfield context, not least its geographical isolation which renders students morereliant upon themselves, the campus and the local environs for extracurricular activities.8.3.3 Writing skillsOne topic on which there was broad agreement amongst Course Directors was concern about standardsof written English (Extracts 3 16).Extract 16“Out of 40 students, there’s probably a handful or so where it could be a problem if it’snot managed by the supervisor towards the time when they are writing up the report. Ifever that slips then occasionally we do get a poor quality written report. So it’s a matter ofidentifying the students that are weak. Normally, it ties in with, it’s strange but, it ties inwith their academic performance. So by the time they start the thesis we know which onesare borderline and not particularly strong and it’s those that we really have to focus on tomake sure that they are supervised fairly closely in terms of what they put in the report, thestructure and what they write. It’s a relatively small numbers but yes, it’s there.”SOE2 Course DirectorThe thesis was a recurring problem primarily because, as a publicly available document, it is amanifestation of academic standards that is open to external scrutiny. Furthermore, the debate aboutwhether to publish all Masters theses on the web had the effect of focusing Course Directors’ concernsabout standards. Another feature of poor thesis writing was the impact upon supervisors and theirworkloads. Thesis supervision is a relatively unseen aspect of academic work because the process islargely undocumented and the incentives to produce a quality document are strong. Consequently, thereis little evidence to demonstrate differential workloads related to students’ writing skills. Additionally, thetiming of the thesis allows little scope for substantive improvements in writing proficiency.Whilst there was consensus about student writing, there was little agreement about the remedies;particularly as academic staff may not regard it is part of their remit to correct English language (SeeExtract 1). Nevertheless, several Course Directors reported pedagogic strategies designed to deal withstudents most at risk. Firstly, early writing assignments, sometimes formative, had been introducedto identify students in greatest need of ongoing English tuition. Secondly, many courses maximisedopportunities for students to practise writing. In one example, the structure of a group project reportwas deliberately modelled on the thesis to facilitate learning. Thirdly, a long standing Course Directorremarked that much more learning support was now provided for thesis writing than had ever beenoffered previously.A number of confounding issues emerged in discussions about writing skills. The first, andunanticipated, finding was that poor writing was not confined to NNES students alone; UK studentswere reported as less able than formerly to produce good written work. A second point related toIELTS Research Reports Volume 11159